Charlize Theron used a New York Times interview published April 18 to sharply criticize Timothée Chalamet’s February comments dismissing ballet and opera as art forms worth preserving only if audiences still cared. Theron said the remarks were reckless and defended dance as one of the hardest things she has ever done.
“Dance is probably one of the hardest things I ever did. Dancers are superheroes,” Theron said in the paper’s The Interview series, adding that ballet training was “borderline abusive.” She said she had endured “blood infections” from blisters that never healed and remembered “bleeding through your shoes.”
Chalamet made the original remarks at a Variety/ town hall event in February, saying he did not want to work in ballet or opera if it meant telling people to keep something alive “even though no one cares about this anymore.” He later joked that he had “lost 14 cents in viewership” and was “taking shots for no reason.”
The exchange landed as the awards race was still fresh, and some people later blamed the comments for Chalamet’s best actor loss to Michael B. Jordan at the Oscars 2026 after voting had closed in the second week of March. Renowned institutions including La Scala in Milan and the Paris Opera also expressed vexation, while Jamie Lee Curtis said his comments were “silly” and that he could not throw those art forms “under a bus.”
Theron pushed back hardest on the idea that live performance was expendable, saying that in 10 years AI might be able to do Chalamet’s job, but it would not replace a person dancing on a stage. “And we shouldn’t shit on other art forms,” she said. The reaction has not stayed in the realm of criticism alone. Alex Beard said ticket sales at London’s Royal Ballet and Opera jumped “spectacularly” after the remarks, with the public response “nothing short of fantastic,” and he said people in their 20s and 30s make up the bulk of the audience. For readers following the broader Chalamet moment, USinTimes has also tracked his latest Dune business in Timothée Chalamet Leads 19 Locations Selling Dune 3 70mm Imax Tickets.
Theron’s point was blunt: the controversy was never really about one actor’s opinion, but about whether institutions that depend on live bodies, live skill and live risk can survive in a culture increasingly tempted to treat them as optional. On the evidence so far, the answer is that the backlash may have done exactly the opposite of what Chalamet implied.
