Sweeney doesn’t share these stories with any sense of anger or injustice. They’re just her lived experiences. “I’m never one to hold a grudge,” she says. “I don’t think people’s perception of the world can change with hate. Hate doesn’t solve anything.”
It was all a lot for a teenage girl to deal with, Sweeney admits, but she can look back with a sense of gratitude for how it shaped her. “For 20 years I was this person,” she says. “It’s just been in the last five years that my life has changed and grown. Most of my life, I was a completely normal person. You guys didn’t see it because I wasn’t famous.”
She may feel the same inside as ever, but to the outside world, it did seem a bit as though Sydney Sweeney came out of nowhere in 2018. She landed memorable roles in The Handmaid’s Tale and Sharp Objects that were soon followed by a spot in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Those alone would have been big accomplishments for an actor who has more than once been credited on IMDB as “Little Girl.” But within three years she became a household name thanks to the one-two punch of two hit HBO shows, Euphoria and White Lotus, both of which earned her Emmy nominations.
While all that success was great, this year in particular has seen Sweeney go from a rising It girl to a level of fame only found among the stars whose autographed photos now surround us in her office. She began 2024 celebrating the theatrical success of Anyone But You, a rom-com riff on Much Ado About Nothing in which she starred opposite Powell. The movie was the first that she executive-produced under her production company, Fifty-Fifty Films. It did so well at the box office that it became the highest-grossing Shakespeare adaptation of all time, crowding out beloved classics like West Side Story and 10 Things I Hate About You. Next, she hosted Saturday Night Live, starred in the big-budget superhero movie Madame Web with Dakota Johnson, and followed that with Immaculate, a gory and well-received horror movie.
It’s the latter project that gave Sweeney an opportunity to really flex her newfound power: The script was sitting in purgatory (pun intended) for a decade before the actor, looking to add a scary flick to Fifty-Fifty’s lineup, remembered it from a past audition and got it made.
“It’s a weird feeling when people are like, ‘Oh, you’re successful,’ or say, “You’ve made it,’” Sweeney says. “It doesn’t feel like that because there’s so much more I want to accomplish and achieve. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what I’d like to do in my life.”
Still to come in the next few months alone are two buzzy thrillers: Eden, a Ron Howard–directed survival epic; and Echo Valley, a drama written by Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby. Meanwhile, Sweeney has started boxing training for a biopic about Christy Martin, and even further down the line is a Barbarella remake that she says will be in the “really big, world-building sci-fi” space. In all her spare time, she’s been the face for Miu Miu, Armani Beauty, Kérastase, and Laneige.
“From the beginning she knew what she wanted,” says Jennifer Millar, who has represented Sweeney for over a decade. “She knew how she was going to get there, and she’s been doing it.”
Sweeney wouldn’t disagree. “I definitely think through everything that I do and every move I make,” she says. “There’s nothing that I do that is just by happenstance, but also I’m very flexible with the moves that have to be made. It’s important. This industry is like playing chess.”
Occasionally the game has frustrated her. She was recently at Disney World when she got a heads-up from her team that an online tabloid had gone into court records and found her parents’ bankruptcy filings. It was difficult for Sweeney to open up about that part of her past, and it was salt in the wound when people accused her of making it all up to seem more relatable. But the story was published to little fanfare. “The truth was put out there against my will, but then nobody cares,” she says. “All of a sudden it was like, ‘Oh wait, she actually did go through this experience,’ and it wasn’t interesting anymore.”
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