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Actor Timothee Chalamet, the puckish young leading-man du jour, has lately discovered the downside to a form of fame powered by a thousand internet posts and lit by a million memes.<\/p>\n
For about a decade now, the 30-year-old actor has been one of what is known as the internet\u2019s boyfriends \u2013 an arty, non-threatening, emo-ish, quirky young talent, who is just socially awkward enough to feel relatable, even when he\u2019s accepting awards for his acting, flicking his fringe from his eyes as he does so.<\/p>\n
![\"Timothee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/52c7a743fdc61af97c69177c2b179cdff8879759.jpeg\")
Timothee Chalamet arrives at the Oscars on Sunday in Los Angeles.John Locher\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n
He\u2019s handsome in a sweet-faced way that allowed him to be cast as Laurie Laurence in Greta Gerwig\u2019s Little Women, and also as the young gay teenager discovering his sexuality in Luca Guadagnino\u2019s Call Me By Your Name. It helped that he was not the product of a Los Angeles-based fame-system, whereby stars come up through the Disney child-star machine, or perhaps as the offspring of a big Hollywood director.<\/p>\n
Chalamet is from an artistic New York family \u2013 his mother and sister studied at the School of American Ballet, his sister is also an actor, and he grew up in Manhattan Plaza, a famous New York building which provides affordable housing for performing artists. He even attended the high school that served as the model for the high school in the TV show Fame.<\/p>\n
![\"Chalamet](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/a4513c96f4e5f32197230b139af885e57eb1e55f.jpeg\")
Chalamet with his mother, Nicole Flender, at the 32nd Annual Actor Awards on March 1 in LA.Chris Pizzello\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n
In interviews, he has stressed that he comes \u201cfrom a theatre background\u201d and talks frequently about his \u201cart\u201d. When he accepted a Screen Actors Guild Award last year he said, \u201cI\u2019m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don\u2019t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n He has compared himself to Daniel Day Lewis and Marlon Brando, and as part of the press tour for his new movie Marty Supreme, which earned him a best actor Oscar nomination, he said that \u201cit\u2019s been like seven, eight years that I feel like I\u2019ve been handing in really, really committed, top-of-the-line performances\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t want people to take it for granted,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n More recently, Chalamet earned himself a huge internet backlash when he made dismissive remarks about ballet and opera<\/a>, during a YouTube-broadcast fireside chat with fellow actor Matthew McConaughey, so earnest you would think they were discussing something genuinely important, not a movie about a spaceman and another about a ping-pong player.<\/p>\n Chalamet told his interlocutor that \u201cI don\u2019t want to be working in ballet or opera, or, you know, things where it\u2019s like, \u2018Hey, keep this thing alive\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, quickly: \u201cAll respect to the ballet and opera people out there,\u201d and said that he \u201ctook shots for no reason\u201d. He joked that he would lose \u201c14 cents in viewership\u201d from making the comments.<\/p>\n The internet cancellation was swift, and migrated quickly to the mainstream. He was criticised on the popular US breakfast show The View, and at the Oscars ceremony, host Conan O\u2019Brien made him the butt of jokes.<\/p>\n The problem with riding to fame, popularity and wealth via internet-fuelled celebrity is that the internet always eats its own. This is not a problem that plagues opera and ballet stars, for all their puny viewership.<\/p>\n Even Chalamet superfan Simone Cromer, who has powered his online fame \u2013 she runs a popular social media account called Club Chalamet \u2013 announced she needed \u201ca break\u201d from \u201ccovering the Chalamet\/Oscar quests\u201d. According to The New York Times, she is turning her attention to a different star \u2013 Connor Storrie of Heated Rivalry<\/a>.<\/p>\n A young, celebrated actor has an ego? This is not top-of-the-line news, although Chalamet\u2019s naked self-admiration does break the unspoken pact of contemporary celebrity interviews, where they pretend to be fun, approachable and normal.<\/p>\n Related Video<\/p>\n Movie studios and the Hollywood publicity machine have always manufactured adulation of their stars, but once it was through cover shoots for celebrity magazines, where the star granted a guarded interview and got done up for glamorous photographs. In the social media era, the star on the make must do much more. Magazine covers and talk-show appearances are fine, but he or she must also feed the algorithm.<\/p>\n Social media is now flooded with short-cut videos which can be chopped up for Instagram and TikTok \u2013 of co-stars in a film giving each other quizzes on how well they know each other, or female actors talking through their skincare regimes (never mentioning the copious cosmetic surgery help they surely get), or of actors having jokey chats with YouTube personalities over burgers.<\/p>\n This content-creation ramps up massively during the pre-Oscars season, when studios are sending out their stars for publicity to win awards. Add to that the amount of curated content many stars push out themselves on their Instagram accounts, and it becomes overwhelming.<\/p>\n Related Article For example, I know what supermodel Cindy Crawford\u2019s morning regime is (it involves a lot of lymphatic drainage skin-brushing). I just don\u2019t know why she needs me to know it.<\/p>\n The result is a celebrity culture so ubiquitous that it is now impossible to go to a movie and not see that you are watching actors, no matter how great, act the shit out of parts.<\/p>\n We know so much about these actors and their personal lives that it becomes difficult to believe in the characters they are playing; to suspend reality and feel we are watching, say, Cathy Earnshaw, rather than Margot Robbie playing her.<\/p>\n It must be even more exhausting for the stars themselves, required to churn out so much casual content to sell their films (after all, cinema-going is also suffering a popularity crisis). No wonder they make missteps like Chalamet did.<\/p>\n![\"Butt](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4dda8600e68adb72c64a2ac43ef088be9b1f8432.jpeg\")
Butt of jokes at the Oscar: Chalamet with girlfriend Kylie Jenner.Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Timothee](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/43f89b7d0d9ee11f6a21bfc38e78c7a9867b32cd.jpeg\")
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ACO\u2019s Richard Tognetti says Chalamet\u2019s comments \u201cwouldn\u2019t have hurt if they didn\u2019t hit\u201d.Photo: Edwina Pickles<\/p>\n