In a tragic case of male ego coming to the fore,Timothée Chalamet, who went from playing European sad boys to a despicable American table tennis player in search of glory, lost this year’s biggest acting award to Sinners’ Michael B. Jordan. In a February 2026 conversation with former colleagueMatthew McConaughey, Chalamet threw shade at ballet and opera, showing us How to Lose an Oscar in Ten Days. Under fire for defending the need to “keep movie theatres alive” while attacking other art forms, he has alienated many of his once devoted fans.
“I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera,” the actor said, “Where it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this anymore.’” Quick to backtrack his comment, Chalamet then claimed he respects both communities.
As karma would have it, he did not win a BAFTA Actor Award or an Oscar a few weeks later, despite having been considered the front-runner throughout the whole award season. Members of the ballet and opera communities openly rejoiced at Chalamet’s downfall and took to social media to voice their grievances with the actor’s remarks. Notably, the English National Ballet commented on the situation, saying that these art forms are “not only alive and well, but thriving.” Other companies took this as a promotional opportunity, with the Los Angeles Music Centeroffering a 20 per cent discount on ballets this summer by using the code “CHALAMET.”
As such, we may ask ourselves: Is Chalamet onto something? As someone who has grown up with a profound love for the performing arts, it seems to me that Chalamet misspoke, but the public may have slightly blown it out of proportion. Ballet and opera are not dying, but they have historically been extremely exclusive art forms, associated with the European aristocracy—an exclusivity that many wish to uphold. These are art forms that have largely catered to the elite and privileged and tend to feature predominantly white, slender, and able-bodied artists. Thus, Chalamet may have opened up an important conversation about the accessibility of these performing arts. Still, undermining other art forms to argue the value of your own is not the right approach.
In my view, then, Chalamet, whose family has a background in the performing arts, spoke with arrogance but did point to something important: Cinema and ballet cater to vastly different audiences, and the former is a lot more accessible than the latter. It would be a lie to say that “no one cares” about ballet and opera, but these are two art forms that have not given many people the opportunity to care, which is something that needs to be improved should they wish to avoid proving Chalamet’s statement correct.
Chalamet’s biggest problem is that he has used method acting throughout his Oscar campaign, but the character he was campaigning for, Marty Mauser, is a terrible person. There has been a recent debate around method acting and Kristen Stewart’scomments that male actors use the gendered practice of method acting to mask vulnerability and assert control, while women who do the same are labelled as difficult or crazy. It could be argued, then, that Chalamet’s comments are a continuation of his choice of relying on method acting for the Marty Supreme campaign. We may then question the gendered component of the practice of method acting and the validity of using it as an excuse to act like a bad person.
Ultimately, it seems to me that while Chalamet should not have shamed other art forms to promote his own, it has forced our society to have important conversations about the accessibility of the performing arts and the validity of method acting. Having these conversations matters if we wish to uphold the egalitarian ethos of democracy and strive to flatten the structural injustices that burden our society.