{"id":619377,"date":"2026-04-20T15:03:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T15:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/619377\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T15:03:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T15:03:08","slug":"charlize-theron-joins-chorus-of-disapproval-over-timothee-chalamets-ballet-comments-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/619377\/","title":{"rendered":"Charlize Theron joins chorus of disapproval over Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s ballet comments | Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actor and former ballet dancer Charlize Theron has joined the chorus of disapproval aimed at Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet over his remarks that appeared to disrespect performers of ballet and opera<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the New York Times<\/a>, Theron said: \u201cOh, boy, I hope I run into him one day,\u201d adding: \u201cThat 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 Timoth\u00e9e\u2019s job, but it will not be able to replace a person on a stage dancing live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theron, who studied as a teenager at the Joffrey Ballet<\/a> in New York before a knee injury prevented her from continuing with the art form, also commented on the physical price dancers pay. \u201cIt taught me to be tough. It\u2019s borderline abusive. There were several times that I had blood infections from blisters that just never healed. And you don\u2019t get a day off. I\u2019m literally talking about bleeding through your shoes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chalamet made the comments in February during a video conversation with fellow actor Matthew McConaughey, in which he said: \u201cI don\u2019t want to be working in ballet or opera \u2026 Things where it\u2019s like, \u2018Hey, keep this thing alive, even though no one cares about this any more.\u2019\u201d High-profile figures including Jamie Lee Curtis, Sam Taylor-Johnson, ballet star Misty Copeland, Eva Mendes and Helen Hunt have previously registered their disapproval of Chalamet\u2019s remarks, while Italian film-maker and opera director Luca Guadagnino, who cast Chalamet in the 2017 film Call Me By Your Name, defended the actor<\/a>, saying he didn\u2019t \u201cunderstand how one [single] comment can become a planetary polemic\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Theron also discussed her childhood and teenage years in South Africa<\/a>, including her father\u2019s death after being shot by her mother in self-defence. Theron described her father as a \u201cfull-blown functioning drunk\u201d and said that her mother \u201csent me to a boarding school specifically because she wanted me to get out of the house\u201d.<\/p>\n

She described in detail the day of the shooting, when her father came to their house in June 1991 in Benoni, near Johannesburg, and attempted to break in. Theron said: \u201cHe shot through the steel doors to get in, making it very clear that he was going to kill us \u2026 [My mother] came into my bedroom. The two of us were holding the door with our bodies because there wasn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theron added: \u201cHe walked to the [gun] safe, and my mom pulled the door open \u2026 [and] she followed my father, who was by then opening the safe to get more weapons out, and she shot him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theron\u2019s mother Gerda was not prosecuted for the shooting, after South Africa\u2019s attorney general ruled it was an act of self-defence<\/a>. Theron said: \u201cThe next morning she sent me to school. She was just like, We\u2019re going to move on. Not necessarily the healthiest thing, but it worked for us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Actor and former ballet dancer Charlize Theron has joined the chorus of disapproval aimed at Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-619377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}