It was supposed to be his moment of triumph. When Timothée Chalamet took to the Oscars red carpet on Sunday, he doubtless expected (or at least, hoped) he’d be walking away victorious at the end of the night.
After all, his film, Marty Supreme, was a critical darling. Critics had raved about it, and especially about Chalamet’s performance as the livewire ping-pong hustler, Marty Mauser.
And yet. When the Oscars were over, Chalamet left empty-handed. And not just him: Marty Supreme won nothing at all, despite being nominated an impressive nine times.
What went wrong? Somewhere along the line, the dream fizzled. But how much of it was bad luck, and how much of it was down to Chalamet himself?
When the film came out, it seemed precision-tooled to generate awards buzz: a cameo from Gwyneth Paltrow, a scrappy underdog story, winning editing; all of it anchored by an electric performance from its leading man.
Chalamet himself certainly seemed to think so: after missing out on the Oscar for A Complete Unknown, he seemed determined not to let this second chance slip through his fingers. Soon enough, he began a whirlwind press tour in which he started popping up everywhere.
Everything was Marty-themed: he tapped his celeb pals to rep a line of Marty Supreme-themed merch (which quickly sold out), turned the MSG Sphere into a gigantic ping-pong ball and even wore Marty orange to the film’s premiere. He joked about raining ping-pong balls in Los Angeles and getting an orange blimp to fly over the city.
His tactics worked. Marty Supreme went on to take a staggering $179m at the box office (making it A24’s highest grossing film ever) and set its star on the path for awards glory.
By the time December rolled around, he had scooped a Golden Globe, a Satellite Award and a Chicago Film Critics Association award for his work, among others.
But it wasn’t as done and dusted as his PR red carpet stunts made it seem. January to March is usually when the frontrunners for the Oscar race become clear. A star can’t always sustain the buzz needed to get them past the finishing line; conversely, others will find themselves boosted into frontrunner status and lauded until their win becomes all but assured (see Jessie Buckley’s win for Hamnet).
The first wobbles came when Chalamet failed to scoop the BAFTA Award – which instead went to Robert Aramayo for his film I Swear. And when it came to Best Picture, it was Sinners that won. At the Actors Awards (formerly the SAG Awards), Sinners won again.
Suddenly a new world order started to assert itself – one in which Michael B. Jordan was looking like a very likely contender for the coveted Best Actor award, which he ultimately did go onto win.
Chalamet has made no secret of his desire to achieve an awards clean sweep; indeed, one could argue that it was this naked ambition that has gradually turned him off to voters and indeed the general public. Just like his character, Marty Mauser, he’s been relentless in his quest for glory and desire to toot his own horn, perhaps to the detriment of his own public image.
Just see his acceptance speech at the 2025 SAG Awards, in which he declared that he was “really in pursuit of greatness.”
“I know people don't usually talk like that, but I wanna be one of the greats, I'm inspired by the greats,” he said on the podium. “I'm inspired by the greats here tonight. I'm as inspired by Daniel Day-Lewis, Marlon Brando and Viola Davis as I am by Michael Jordan and Michael Phelps. And I wanna be up there.”
Aspiring to hit the same levels as Michael Jordan? That was 12 months ago, but it doesn’t seem as though his opinion has changed at all. Recently, Chalamet told Margaret Gardiner that “it’s been like seven, eight years that I feel like I’ve been handing in really, really committed, top-of-the-line performances.”
He went onto describe Marty Supreme as "top-level sh*t”, and just like Marty, a new picture of Chalamet began to emerge: one that was just the tiniest bit conceited. That image hasn’t been helped by his recent (and much publicised) whiff, in which he told Matthew McConnaughey, “I don’t want to be working in ballet or opera, or things where it’s like, ‘Hey, keep this thing alive, even though it’s like, no one cares about this anymore.’”
“All respect to the ballet and opera people out there,” he added. “I just lost 14 cents in viewership.”
Understandably, this went down like a lead balloon in the ballet and opera world, and beyond. "Why are any artists taking shots at any other artists?" Jamie Lee Curtis posted on her Instagram stories.
For many, it seemed to sum up everything that had gone awry with Chalamet’s bid for Oscars glory: a little self-satisfied, a little out of touch, a little too dismissive. Somewhere along the line, Chalamet had become overexposed, or maybe the mask had slipped.
There’s likely more at play here. Despite Chalamet’s impressive resumé, he is still young. Perhaps the Academy feels like he hasn’t sufficiently proven himself as an actor.
Awards have a habit of coming around when the narrative is right (which he doubtless thought it was), or when the voting body feels like it’s your ‘turn’ – see Paul Thomas Anderson, who finally clinched an Oscar at the age of 70, despite his formidable existing body of work. Or, indeed, Leonardo DiCaprio, who eventually won for The Revenant in 2016, despite it arguably not being his best work.
One thing’s for sure: don’t expect Chalamet to stop any time soon. The campaign for 2027 begins again today – although, all things considered, maybe a holiday would be better.
