What should Timothée Chalamet have done differently? That’s the question du jour for some Oscar viewers after Michael B. Jordan walked away with the best actor Oscar for his remarkable dual role in Sinners.
At 30, Chalamet is still young, but his tour de force work in Marty Supreme seemed designed to draw in voters, and the movie netted enough overall nominations to make prognosticators wonder if his undeniable charisma would make him the second youngest best actor winner of all time, behind Sunday’s best actor presenter Adrien Brody. In the end, Chalamet may well do a bit of Monday-morning quarterbacking to wonder how things could have gone his way.
Even before the ceremony, he was the subject of countless pieces dissecting perceived campaign missteps or questioning the kind of leading man he had become.
More than most actors of his generation, Chalamet is adept at playing the modern marketing game, and he’s been doing it for basically the past three years nonstop. He has established himself through sheer will as the 21st century answer to everyone from Marlon Brando to Gene Wilder. He wooed a family-friendly audience as the younger version of a mercurial chocolatier in Wonka, before starring in best picture nominees Dune: Part Two and A Complete Unknown in 2024 (and getting his second best actor nomination for the latter, embodying musical icon Bob Dylan). He is already ramping up marketing for the third Dune, starting with today’s teaser.
Now that Chalamet is also dealing with the headache of his remarks last month to Matthew McConaughey about the lack of impact that ballet and opera have on modern culture, the first and most obvious lesson is that, to quote the old axiom, absence makes the heart grow fonder. (With the notable caveat that since those remarks got publicized on the final day of Oscar voting, they probably didn’t sink his chances with voters, no matter what people may say now.)
Yes, Dune: Part Three is going to vie for space in the cultural and Oscars conversation once it opens in December, but that’s nine months away. That time may help some of the terminally online to mentally separate themselves from the movie star, and for him to back away from them, for a little bit. Chalamet’s fame is undeniable, but is also so vast that 2026 could be a great time for him to take a breather.
Another pitfall is one that’s only more recent, and something Chalamet can use his reasonable heft to fix if he so chooses. His most recent films aren’t just about singular figures (such as Paul Atreides or Dylan or Marty Mauser), but they require someone who’s all but crafting a cult of personality to shepherd those characters into existence. Chalamet does this almost too well, but he’s proven in his pre-pandemic work, like Call Me by Your Name and Lady Bird, that he can be part of an ensemble and pull on heartstrings too.
There’s some of the younger Tom Cruise in how Chalamet’s star has soared, as well as how some have soured on him (even if Scientology isn’t to blame in the younger man’s case). It took Cruise’s heavily made-up, inside-baseball cameo in 2008’s Tropic Thunder to remind audiences that they still did like the man in spite of his personal choices. A mythology grew up around Cruise and the ways he endangered himself onscreen, furthering his career rehab. For Chalamet, it will be less about taking part in death-defying stunts and more about embracing his talent while not dominating the screen in place of his fellow actors. We’re just a few years removed from him appearing in a Wes Anderson film with a vast ensemble, The French Dispatch. He could easily fit in that style of film once again.
Finally, while Chalamet’s able to sell himself in more traditional venues like late night TV and cutting-edge spots like hip podcasts, he may need to loosen up just a bit. During the 2025 Oscar ceremony, one of the goofier and more joyous moments came when host Conan O’Brien playfully razzed his friend Adam Sandler for under dressing, after which Sandler fake-stalked off in a huff, but not before walking up to the star and shouting Chalamet’s last name at him (with that typical loopy comic voice of his), to great laughter. Chalamet was, in essence, in on the joke.
This year, Conan tried a number of times to vibe with Chalamet, to zero effect. Chalamet could look to another elder statesman, Leonardo DiCaprio, who happily if bemusedly played along with Conan’s attempt to create a new meme. You don’t have to be the fool to be in on the joke.
It’s not that we’re going to truly see a rapid transition for Chalamet. Not 24 hours after Jordan won the best actor Oscar, Chalamet was on Instagram hyping up Dune: Part Three. And anyone who feels Chalamet “lost” the Oscar can take comfort in a couple things: First, he’s been nominated three times by age 30, and it’s a safe bet he’s going to get nominated again; second, if you buy into the “Well, it’s his time” narrative that crops up at the Oscars, that story will one day anoint itself upon Chalamet’s head. (And perhaps most importantly, Jordan absolutely deserved to win this year.)
There are ways that Chalamet can pick himself back up, perhaps most of all by ignoring the specter of the statue, doing the work and being part of an ensemble once again.