Charlize Theron Has Words For Timothée Chalamet

About two months ago, actor Timothée Chalamet gave an offhand remark in which he said he didn’t want movies to become like ballet and opera, where ‘no one cares’ about them any more.

There was more nuance to the original quote, but the seeming dismissal of two art forms sparked a huge furore online and across the culture. Everyone from opera singers to royal ballet halls responded, calling it a reductive or disappointing take.

It was even joked about at the Oscars, where Chalamet was nominated (and didn’t win). We’re now in late April, and it’s still something people are talking about. The quote is likely to be forever tied to the actor, just as “Marvel movies are not cinema” became linked to Martin Scorsese.

Recently, actress Charlize Theron gave some comments about it while speaking with The New York Times with those comments of hers going viral this weekend. She said:

“Dance is probably one of the hardest things I ever did. Dancers are superheroes. What they put their bodies through in complete silence. Sorry, Timothée Chalamet.

Oh boy, I hope I run into him one day. That was a very reckless comment on an art form, two art forms, that we need to lift up constantly because, yes, they do have a hard time.

But in 10 years, AI is going to be able to do Timothée’s job, but it will not be able to replace a person on a stage dancing live. And we shouldn’t [expletive] on other art forms.”

She goes on to credit dance teaching her “discipline, structure, hard work” and she got multiple blood infections from blisters that just never healed, not to mention bled through her shoes, because there were no days off – “that’s something that you have to practice every single day, the mindset of just, you don’t give up, there’s no other option, you keep going.”