Actress and former ballet dancer Charlize Theron has joined the collective disapproval aimed at Timothée Chalamet following his remarks, which were perceived as disparaging towards ballet and opera performers.
During an interview with the New York Times, Theron stated: “Oh, boy, I hope I run into him one day,” adding: “That was a very reckless comment on 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.”
Theron, who pursued ballet as a teenager at the Joffrey Ballet in New York until a knee injury ended her career in the art form, also spoke about the physical demands placed on dancers. “It taught me to be tough. It’s borderline abusive. There were several times that I had blood infections from blisters that just never healed. And you don’t get a day off. I’m literally talking about bleeding through your shoes.”
Chalamet made these comments in February during a video discussion with fellow actor Matthew McConaughey, where he remarked: “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera … Things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this any more.’” High-profile individuals including Jamie Lee Curtis, Sam Taylor-Johnson, ballet icon Misty Copeland, Eva Mendes, and Helen Hunt have previously expressed their disapproval of Chalamet’s statements, while Italian filmmaker and opera director Luca Guadagnino, who directed Chalamet in the 2017 film *Call Me By Your Name*, defended the actor, saying he didn’t “understand how one [single] comment can become a planetary polemic”.
In the interview, Theron also spoke about her childhood and adolescence in South Africa, including the death of her father, who was shot by her mother in self-defence. Theron characterized her father as a “full-blown functioning drunk” and mentioned that her mother “sent me to a boarding school specifically because she wanted me to get out of the house”.
She recounted in detail the day of the shooting, when her father arrived at their home in June 1991 in Benoni, near Johannesburg, and attempted to break in. Theron said: “He shot through the steel doors to get in, making it very clear that he was going to kill us … [My mother] came into my bedroom. The two of us were holding the door with our bodies because there wasn’t a lock on it. And he just stepped back and started shooting through the door. And this is the crazy thing: not one bullet hit us.”
Theron further added: “He walked to the [gun] safe, and my mom pulled the door open … [and] she followed my father, who was by then opening the safe to get more weapons out, and she shot him.”
Theron’s mother, Gerda, was not prosecuted for the shooting, after South Africa’s attorney general ruled it was an act of self-defence. Theron shared: “The next morning she sent me to school. She was just like, We’re going to move on. Not necessarily the healthiest thing, but it worked for us.”