Steven Spielberg has become the latest, and perhaps most quietly devastating, voice to push back against Timothée Chalamet’s comments about ballet and opera, delivering a pointed reminder at SXSW that the art forms still matter.
Speaking at a panel titled The Big Picture With Steven Spielberg at the 2026 SXSW Conference and Festival on Friday, March 13, the legendary filmmaker, 79, discussed the power of shared cultural experiences when he made his move.
After talking about the unique feeling of leaving a movie theater after a great movie, he extended that thought to concerts, then added to applause from the audience: “And it happens in ballet and opera, by the way.”
He followed that with a blunt statement that these experiences are worth protecting. “We want it to be sustained. We want it to last forever.”
He did not name Chalamet.
The 30-year-old actor had sparked a wave of industry criticism after a filmed town hall with Matthew McConaughey at the University of Texas at Austin on February 24, in which he said he had no interest in working in art forms where the pitch was essentially to keep something alive that “nobody cares about anymore.”
He seemed to clock the potential fallout almost immediately, adding a hasty cover: “All due respect to all the ballet and opera people out there. I just lost 14 cents in viewership. I just took pictures for no reason.”
The attempt at self-deprecating damage control was not entirely successful.
The reaction that followed was swift and came from across the industry. Ballet stars Misty Copeland and Tiler Peck responded, as did opera singers Andrea Bocelli and Isabelle Leonard.
The Metropolitan Opera itself weighed in.
Whoopi Goldberg, Nathan Lane, Jamie Lee Curtis, Karla Sofía Gascón, Sheryl Lee Ralph and Charlie Puth were among the many others who expressed their feelings.
Spielberg’s contribution was characteristically understated, no lecture, no direct exhortation, just a quiet and authoritative restatement of what most of the industry already believes.
Coming from one of cinema’s greatest living filmmakers, at one of the entertainment world’s most prominent festivals, it still landed.
