Timothée Chalamet was, until very recently, Hollywood's golden boy and a frontrunner to win an Oscar this weekend - so is the backlash he has faced about more than his views on ballet and opera?

When Chalamet recently said "no-one cares" about ballet or opera any more, he clearly wasn't expecting people to care enough about the remarks to ignite a furore. How wrong he was.

It turns out a lot of people have very strong feelings about ballet and opera, but even more so about Chalamet himself.

"He's an absolute fool," theatre critic and arts broadcaster Ian Brown told BBC Radio London on Saturday. "I just think he's ridiculous, and I suspect that will come back to haunt him."

Meanwhile, pop culture podcast The Spill titled its new episode "Why we're officially done with Timothée Chalamet", and posed the question: "Has the Timothée era officially come to a screeching halt?"

'Cheap shots'

Chalamet's comments may have been misjudged, but his crimes are pretty low-level in comparison with some of the wrongdoing that's been perpetrated in Hollywood over the years.

In a lengthy interview last month with Matthew McConaughey, his on-screen dad from 2014's Interstellar, Chalamet was apparently trying make the point that he didn't want cinemagoing to become a minority pursuit.

"I don't want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it's like, 'Keep this thing alive even though no-one cares about this any more'," he said.

"All respect to the ballet and opera people out there," he added hastily, realising how his words may go down. "I just lost 14 cents in viewership. Damn, I just took shots for no reason."

Ballet and opera artists and companies mounted a strong defence.

"To take cheap shots at fellow artists says more in this interview than anything else he could say," US opera singer Isabel Leonard responded. "Shows a lot about his character."

Some also smartly capitalised on the attention, with Seattle Opera offering 14% off tickets to Carmen using the promo code TIMOTHEE. "Timmy, you're welcome to use it too," they said.

Opera and ballet have devoted audiences, but there may have been some basis in Chalamet's point.

An official survey of arts attendance in the US, carried out every five years, showed that just 0.7% of the population went to the opera at least once in 2022, down from 2.2% in 2017. Ballet and other live dance declined from 8.2% to 4.7% over the same period.

While some have accused Chalamet of punching down, he could be speaking from a position of knowledge - he has previously talked glowingly about his grandmother, mother and sister all being dancers.

The timing of his comments probably played a part in the backlash, with the Oscars fast approaching, and Chalamet nominated for best actor for Marty Supreme.

His remarks started attracting attention early last week, and the reaction snowballed as the week went on. That it coincided with the end of Oscar voting may or may not have been a coincidence. Club Chalamet, his biggest fan account, claimed it was a "smear campaign" to dent his chances.

Losing momentum

Variety's London bureau chief Alex Ritman says the controversy peaked after Oscar voting closed, so probably won't have "any great impact" on the outcome.

However, the tide was already turning against Chalamet in the Oscars race after he failed to win two of the biggest and most recent warm-up prizes - at the Baftas and the Actors Awards.

"It's about the momentum as you get into that last leg and you see how the tea leaves are falling," Ritman says. "He was obviously a frontrunner for a very long time, and then when the all the different award ceremonies start happening back-to-back, you get a lay of the land."

Rehna Azim, awards editor for Movie Marker magazine, is on "Team Timothée".

"I think it's good that Timothée has said something interesting instead of the same bland, safe answers that many actors give," she says. "I think he should still get his Oscar. I think he deserves it.

"He's really good with his fans, he's a great actor, and I think he's still an interesting actor - and I would hate to see that killed off because some people on on the internet have a go at him, because it's cool to have a go at him."

As far as the Oscars are concerned, the presumed favourites often attract more scrutiny than anyone else.

Irish actress Jessie Buckley, who has been seen as a dead cert to win best actress for Hamnet, recently attempted to repair any damage from a smaller controversy after saying she had threatened to get rid of pet cats because they defecated on her pillow.

Both semi-scandals are simply "a sign that Oscar season has gone on too long", suggests Michael Schulman, author of Oscar Wars.

"Everyone has had too many opportunities to be in front of a microphone talking about whatever's on their mind, and we're running out of things to say."

Not everything that blows up during the Oscars race is down to dirty tricks, he believes. "I don't think that the Oscar strategists are that powerful."

Chalamet "deserves an Oscar", Schulman adds, but many people have "soured on him a little bit just over the past couple weeks", even before the current controversy.

"I think that has a lot to do with the persona he was putting out there to sell the movie, as this callow youth full of braggadocio.

"It was funny, and it got people to go see the movie very successfully, but there was an awkward transition into award season where he tried to play reverend and humble, and I think people had already attached to the Marty Supreme brat persona.

"So now he comes off as young and obnoxious, and no one's going to rush to give a young, obnoxious person the best actor award. So I don't think it's gone quite right for him."

While Schulman believes Chalamet's persona on the Marty Supreme press tour was mostly an act, it has left other people confused.

Is he really a brash celebrity who dates reality TV stars, or a humble and serious actor?

Or maybe both - an excellent, serious actor who comes across as obnoxious when he makes no secret of his desire to win an Oscar and become "one of the greats", and who dates a reality TV star, Kylie Jenner, and is very good at stunts to sell his films.

Other factors may in fact have a greater say in the Oscar race than the opera and ballet comments - such as unease over reports that surfaced saying a 17-year-old girl was cast to play a sex worker in a previous film from Marty Supreme director Josh Safdie. The director was reportedly unaware of her age until after the scene was shot.

There has also been a swing of support towards Sinners, especially after the Baftas, following which the film's stars Michael B Jordan and Delroy Lindo were praised for their composure when a guest with Tourette's involuntarily shouted a racial slur while they were on stage.

"But he still could win," Schulman says.