The tagline of Timothée Chalamet’s upcoming sports-drama, Marty Supreme, is “Dream Big.” And, in case you haven’t noticed, Timmy’s whole shtick for the past year or so has been about his pursuit of greatness in Hollywood.
It pretty much all began in February when he said this at the SAG Awards while accepting Best Actor in a Leading Role for A Complete Unknown: “I know we’re in a subjective business, but the truth is…I want to be one of the greats. I’m inspired by the greats. 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, Michael Phelps, and I want to be up there.”
At the start of the year, the speech garnered widespread praise and sparked a positive conversation about Timothée’s “athlete-coded mentality” towards his craft. However, as time has passed, there’s been a shift, and it seems Timmy’s honesty about his work is beginning to rub people the wrong way.
For context, Marty Supreme comes out on Christmas Day and stars Timothée as Marty Mauser, a ping-pong star who goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness in his sport. Having already received a Golden Globe nomination for the movie, Timothée’s performance is getting major Oscar buzz, and, after narrowly losing out on Best Actor last year, it seems he’s campaigning heavily to take home the win in 2026.
So, in a recent interview with Margaret Gardiner, Timothée was asked what “stayed with [him]” about playing Marty, to which he replied, “assertiveness,” “confidence,” and the act of calling things as they are. With that in mind, he then took the opportunity to praise his own work as an actor.
“This is probably my best performance, you know, and 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 said. “And it’s important to say it out loud because the discipline and the work ethic I’m bringing to these things — I don’t want people to take it for granted. I don’t want to take it for granted. This is really some top-level shit.”
Of course, there’s no denying that Timothee has delivered many incredible performances. We’ve got Little Women, Lady Bird, Beautiful Boy, and the Dune franchise, and he’s also received two Oscar nominations for Call Me By Your Name and A Complete Unknown.
But, despite the facts of the matter, Timothée’s recent showboating hasn’t gone down all that well with some movie fans, many of whom feel that he’s coming across as a little arrogant.
Within the context of Marty’s pursuit of greatness in the film, some have even wondered if Timothée is playing into a character on the press tour.
But, amid all the chatter, there are still plenty of fans who remain fully supportive of Timothée’s confidence, saying that it’s “refreshing to hear an actor talk their shit as if they’re an athlete.”
Timothée’s comments went very viral yesterday, and there has since been a development: At the time of writing, the interview is no longer available on YouTube, and a number of Reddit threads and X posts discussing the topic have been deleted, too.
It’s not entirely clear what has happened here, so we’ve reached out to Timothée’s team for some clarity. We’ll let you know if we get a response. In the meantime, where do you fall in the debate? Do you love the confidence, or do you find it cringeworthy? LMK in the comments.
