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By SAMEER SURI, US SENIOR SHOWBUSINESS REPORTER
Published: 02:44 GMT, 14 March 2026 | Updated: 03:51 GMT, 14 March 2026
Steven Spielberg has become the latest showbiz luminary to respond witheringly to Timothee Chalamet 's swipe at opera and ballet .
The 30-year-old made the unfiltered remark while talking to Matthew McConaughey about his hopes that movie theaters are able to survive.
He then added that 'I don't want to be working in ballet or opera or, you know, things where it's like: "Hey, keep this thing alive," even though no one cares about this anymore,' in an interview for Variety 's Actors on Actors.
'All respect to the ballet and opera people out there,' added Chalamet, who is nominated for a best actor Oscar this Sunday for the ping pong movie Marty Supreme. 'I just lost 14 cents in viewership, I just took shots for no reason.'
His comments drew outrage from theatrical personalities ranging from ballerina Misty Copeland to legend of stage and screen Nathan Lane.
Now three-time Oscar winner Spielberg has added his voice to the choir of venom against Chalamet - after insiders exclusively told the Daily Mail about the 'Stop Timmy' campaign gathering steam ahead of the Academy Awards .
Timothee Chalamet's swipe at opera and ballet, made during a Variety interview with Matthew McConaughey, has drawn a withering response from Steven Spielberg
Spielberg slyly inveighed against Chalamet while discussing his own hopes for movie theaters during an onstage interview at the South by Southwest film festival.
'But for me, the real experience comes when we can influence a community to congregate in a strange, dark space where all of us are strangers,' he said.
EXCLUSIVE Humiliating real reason Timothee Chalamet is now headed for Oscars snub: Hollywood insiders spill on brutal 'Stop Timmy' campaign
'At the end of a really good movie experience, we are all united with a whole bunch of feelings that we walk into the daylight with, or into the nighttime with. And there’s nothing like that. It happens in movies, and in concerts. And it happens in ballet and opera, by the way,' he added, according to Variety .
The audience cheered and laughed at the obvious Chalamet dig, and Spielberg noted with a smile: 'And we want that to be sustained. We want that to go on forever.'
Chalamet's dig at opera and ballet came when he and McConaughey were discussing the Hollywood figures who make public statements in support of movie theaters.
'I admire people, and I've done it myself, doing a talk show about how we've got to keep movie theatres alive, you know, we've got to keep this genre alive,' he said.
'And another part of me feels like, if people want to see it, like Barbie, like Oppenheimer , they're going to go see it and go out of their way to be loud and proud about it,' he added, noting opera and ballet do not have that mainstream audience.
When he then apologized for the 'shot' he had taken at the art form, McConaughey said: 'That's not a shot, I hear what you're saying.'
Spielberg inveighed against Chalamet while discussing his own hopes for movie theaters during an onstage interview at the South by Southwest film festival in Texas
Nathan Lane, an Oscar nominee and three-time Tony winner, lambasted Chalamet as a 'schmuck' while discussing the controversy on The View; Lane pictured in 2024
Opera fans and balletomanes were left seething at Chalamet's comments, with two classical singers going as far as to chastise him in public.
'Honestly, I'm shocked that someone so seemingly successful can be so ineloquent and narrow-minded in his views about art while considering himself as an artist as I would only imagine one would as an actor,' said American opera star Isabel Leonard.
Canadian mezzo-soprano Deepa Johnny said: 'What a disappointing take. There is nothing more impressive than the magic of live theatre, ballet and opera. We should be trying to uplift these art forms, these artists and come together across disciplines to do that. The impact of these mediums are long, long-lasting and life-changing.'
Nathan Lane, an Oscar nominee and three-time Tony winner, lambasted Chalamet as a 'schmuck' while discussing the controversy on The View .
