Actor and former ballet dancer Charlize Theron has joined the chorus of disapproval aimed at Timothée Chalamet over his remarks that appeared to disrespect performers of ballet and opera.
In an interview with the New York Times, Theron said: “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 studied as a teenager at the Joffrey Ballet in New York before a knee injury prevented her from continuing with the art form, also commented on the physical price dancers pay. “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 the comments in February during a video conversation with fellow actor Matthew McConaughey, in which he said: “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 figures including Jamie Lee Curtis, Sam Taylor-Johnson, ballet star Misty Copeland, Eva Mendes and Helen Hunt have previously registered their disapproval of Chalamet’s 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, saying he didn’t “understand how one [single] comment can become a planetary polemic”.
In the interview, Theron also discussed her childhood and teenage years in South Africa, including her father’s death after being shot by her mother in self-defence. Theron described her father as a “full-blown functioning drunk” and said that her mother “sent me to a boarding school specifically because she wanted me to get out of the house”.
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: “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 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 said: “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.”
