Timothée Chalamet Didn't Win the Oscar There, Dodged the Bullet
Timothée Chalamet Didn't Win the Oscar There, Dodged the Bullet
Let’s be honest about what happens when you finish watching A24’s Marty Supreme.
You realize the massive hype doesn't match the reality of what is on screen.
The Academy voters at the legacy Oscar committee only put Timothée Chalamet as a nominee [9 Oscar nominations], and honestly? He didn't win the Oscar there.
He totally dodged the bullet.
Winning an award like that usually affects actors badly anyway, trapping them in fake perfection.
But looking at his performance next to Kevin O’Leary, you can see exactly why he didn't take the trophy home.
You can completely feel the artificial strings, the memorised words, and the memorised body language.
O’Leary was so natural he made Chalamet’s acting look incredibly obvious.
To be honest, the movie is a letdown. I literally fast-forwarded through Timothée’s solo parts, and I fast-forwarded through the Goop owner's (Gwyneth Paltrow) parts because that classic Hollywood drama felt so fake and hollow.
The Shocking Truth: O'Leary Isn't Even Acting
People are calling O’Leary’s performance "insane acting," but we shouldn't even call it acting.
Calling it acting actually brings down the art.
A better description is that he was simply creating a character using his real-life presence.
O’Leary is natural, but let's be real—I can’t believe he was not acting in his early life because he is just bringing himself to the table.
The big secret behind his performance is that his reactions are just coming directly from his gut without any fake training.
Because he is severely dyslexic, O'Leary openly admits he is terrible at memorising scripts.
So when he walked onto the set with Chalamet, he didn't repeat lines or wait for standard theatre cues.
He just used his real-life, cutthroat corporate instincts to read the room and react in real-time.
When you watch him, you aren't watching a reality star doing "prestige drama"—you are watching a real-life tyrant creating a character on pure instinct.
The Panicked Collapse of Chalamet’s Technique
Because O’Leary is operating on pure, unpredictable reality, it threw Chalamet completely out of his comfort zone.
Chalamet is a master of carefully crafted, rehearsed pacing.
But his fast-paced creation of this character was way too repeated, and the nervousness in it was completely overwhelming.
There was absolutely no breath in his play. It was not balanced at all.
Chalamet is still too young to be a seasoned actor. He needs to understand that sometimes just to take a breath and wait in silence is playing.
An actor doesn't need to be constantly moving and doing something.
They need stops. They need silence points to make the next scene memorable.
It is exactly like music. You need a rest to make sense of the music. Without rests, it is just too much.
Instead, it turned into this frantic, "without breathing" style of acting because he was trying so hard to steal the thunder back from O’Leary.
The Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, and Sopranos Feeling
When O’Leary speaks, he brings a heavy, intense psychological weight that instantly gives you a Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and The Sopranos feeling.
You can feel that exact same "quiet threat" on screen.
Like James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, O’Leary doesn’t need to yell, sweat, or wave a gun to completely terrify a room.
He has this perfectly measured, clinical, and completely cold delivery that makes everything he says sound like an execution order.
Just like De Niro’s Jimmy Conway in Goodfellas, O'Leary can smile at you warmly while completely plotting your demise behind his eyes.
He treats human lives like business transactions, and that clinical coldness is infinitely scarier than a loud, shouting actor who is just memorising lines.
The Ultimate 18th-Century New York Mob Boss
O'Leary is so naturally dominant that he could easily run a brutal, historical epic about early 18th-century New York immigrant factions fighting for control of the territory.
Imagine a gritty, Gangs of New York style mob war movie where O'Leary plays a cold, calculating 1700s Irish clan kingpin.
He wouldn't be a hot-headed street brawler swinging a weapon.
He would sit in a candlelit tavern, calmly sipping whiskey, counting his ledger while chaos rages outside.
Picture him looking an Italian syndicate rival dead in the eye on a muddy New York dock.
He wouldn't scream. He would just give them that icy, unblinking glare and use his voice to lay down the law like a true Don.
His natural sarcasm and sharp one-liners translate perfectly into a cynical historical leader who treats a street war exactly like corporate warfare.
The Pointless Ending: So What?
And what about that final scene? A baby is born, Marty cries, and... so what?
What actually happened there? Did his personality magically change? Will his life suddenly be different now?
Or is he just going to end up being a shitty husband and a shitty father like all the others? The movie doesn't tell us. It just drops a cheap emotional cue and expects us to care.
There was absolutely no Oscar-worthy playing in that final act.
It feels like Hollywood is just desperate to find someone—anyone—worth giving an Oscar to, but the new generation of actors is simply not bringing much to the table.
The legacy Oscar committee gets a performance like Chalamet's, throws its hands up, and says, “Good enough, we don't have any other choice.”
The Weird Gwyneth Paltrow Plot Holes
The contrast between O'Leary and the rest of the cast is so brutal that it completely ruins the traditional Hollywood subplots.
Gwyneth Paltrow was barely even there anyway. That entire relationship plot was just weird.
We didn't get to see her character's actual ups and downs. We never got to see her and her husband's shitty marriage actually play out on screen.
Instead, the audience is forced to just assume she is doing what she needs to do. It’s lazy storytelling.
Watching her parts or the standard cinematic filler instantly feels slow, artificial, and flat by comparison.
When O'Leary isn't on screen, the illusion of the movie breaks because the traditional plotlines are hollow. You find yourself hitting the fast-forward button just to get back to the boardroom.
Other cast members they were very good his girlfriend, her husband, japan guy, his friend at the shoes store, his boss, old table tenis champion guy. They were very very good.
Exposing the Industry
By only getting the nomination and missing the win, Chalamet actually dodged the bullet.
But the movie stands as proof of a bigger issue.
By exposing Chalamet's frantic, unbalanced technique, O'Leary proved that raw character creation will always devour a memorised school play.
Hollywood is desperate for icons, but you can't manufacture the kind of presence O'Leary brings with just memorised body language.
