Sydney Sweeney

Sydney Bernice Sweeney (born September 12, 1997) is an American actress. She gained early recognition for her roles in Everything Sucks!, The Handmaid's Tale, and Sharp Objects in 2018. She received wider acclaim for her performances in the drama series Euphoria (2019–present) and the first season of the anthology series The White Lotus (2021), both of which earned her nominations for Primetime Emmy Awards.

In film, Sweeney garnered critical acclaim for her performances in the drama film Reality (2023) and for her portrayal of professional boxer Christy Martin in the biopic Christy (2025), and has also appeared in the box office hits Anyone but You (2023) and The Housemaid (2025). Her other film credits include Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019), Madame Web (2024), and Immaculate (2024).

Early life

Sydney Bernice Sweeney was born on September 12, 1997, in Spokane, Washington. Her mother is a former criminal defense lawyer and her father works in the hospitality industry. She has a brother, Trent, who joined the Air Force in 2020. Sweeney was raised in the Idaho panhandle along the Washington border at a rural lakeside home that her family has inhabited for five generations. She has said her family is religious. Sweeney attended school at Saint George's School in Spokane. She was active in numerous sports: "I was in every single sport possible...I was on the soccer team, the baseball team, the snow slalom ski team, I was wakeboarding." Sweeney said she had a wakeboarding accident as a child when the edge of her board propelled backward and sliced the area next to her eye, leaving a permanent scar. She also participated in combat sports including taekwondo, jujitsu, grappling, and kickboxing. Sweeney said she began practicing combat sports at age five to help manage her hyperactivity.

Sweeney became interested in acting after auditioning to be an extra in an independent film that was shooting in the Spokane area. To convince her parents to allow her to pursue acting, she presented them with a five-year business plan. Sweeney began to audition and book commercial acting jobs in Seattle and Portland, Oregon, where the family temporarily resided, until moving to Los Angeles at age 13. In high school, Sweeney was on the robotics team and in the mathematics club. She was valedictorian of her graduating class at Brighton Hall School in Burbank, California. In 2016, Sweeney briefly worked at Universal Studios Hollywood, but left after she was hired for an acting job.

Career

Early work (2009–2019)

As a child actress, Sweeney debuted on television in 2009 with a bit part in an episode of the series Heroes. Her first film role was in the 2010 horror comedy ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction. She played supporting roles in television shows such as 90210, Criminal Minds, Grey's Anatomy and Pretty Little Liars. In 2018, she starred as Emaline Addario in the Netflix series Everything Sucks!, which revolved around two groups of high school students in Oregon in 1996. She appeared in the HBO miniseries Sharp Objects, recurring as Alice, a roommate whom Amy Adams's character meets at a psychiatric facility. Her character originally had a smaller role, but the director kept bringing her in for more scenes. For the role, Sweeney studied stories of girls who experience mental illness and self-harming, and visited hospitals with patients who self-harmed. She filmed Everything Sucks! and Sharp Objects concurrently, the former during the week and the latter on weekends.

Sweeney had a role in the 2018 film Under the Silver Lake. She had a recurring role in the second season of the dystopian drama series The Handmaid's Tale as Eden Spencer, a pious and obedient girl from the totalitarian and theocratic Republic of Gilead. She starred as the heroine of the horror film Along Came the Devil. In 2019, Sweeney appeared in the drama film Clementine, the coming-of-age film Big Time Adolescence, and Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Breakthrough (2019–present)

In June 2019, Sweeney took the role of Cassie Howard, a teenager with a reputation for promiscuity, in the HBO drama series Euphoria. The show was a breakout hit, becoming the second most watched HBO series. Her performance was praised, earning her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2022. Variety wrote that her performance "proves that Sweeney's one hell of a shapeshifter between her deft turns in this, The Handmaid's Tale, Everything Sucks and Sharp Objects." Her many nude scenes in the series received significant attention, generating discussions about nudity in film and the male gaze.

In 2020, Sweeney founded the production company Fifty-Fifty Films. The same year, she starred in the television film Nocturne and Webtoon's live-action advertisement for the online comic Lore Olympus, appearing as Persephone. In 2021, Sweeney appeared in the first season of Mike White's anthology series The White Lotus as a sardonic college sophomore. For that performance, she was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie in 2022. She appeared on the Time 100 Next list for 2022.

In 2023, Sweeney starred as U.S. Air Force veteran Reality Winner in Tina Satter's thriller drama Reality, which premiered in February at the 73rd Berlin Film Festival. Steph Green of IndieWire called the film "inventively mounted and extraordinarily tense" and Sweeney "the real deal". Jessica Kiang of Variety wrote that she played Winner "so convincingly that it's hard to remember her as the sardonic, pampered teen in The White Lotus, or the nice-girl-turned-nasty in Euphoria". Sweeney next had a role in the crime thriller Americana, which premiered at the South by Southwest Festival in March 2023.

Sweeney starred in the video for the Rolling Stones' single "Angry", from their 2023 album Hackney Diamonds. In response to criticism that the video objectified her, she defended it as "empowerment through embracing my body". At age 25, Sweeney was selected as one of Forbes's 2023 30 Under 30 in the celebrity category. Later that year, she and Glen Powell starred in the romantic comedy Anyone but You, which premiered in December 2023. Sweeney was an executive producer for the film and was instrumental in hiring Powell and director Will Gluck. She also contributed to the script. The film became a commercial sleeper hit, grossing over $220 million worldwide.

In 2024, Sweeney had a supporting role in the superhero film Madame Web, set in Sony's Spider-Man Universe franchise. It was released in February and received negative reviews, bombing at the box office. Of the film's commercial and critical failure, Sweeney said, "I was just hired as an actress in it, so I was just along for the ride for whatever was going to happen." In March 2024, Sweeney hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live. Following her appearance, conservative Canadian newspaper National Post ran an article asking "Are Sydney Sweeney's breasts double-D harbingers of the death of woke?" and right-wing academic Richard Hanania tweeted "Wokeness is dead" alongside a clip of Sweeney centered on her bust. Sweeney called the obsession with her appearance "this weird relationship that people have with me that I have no control over".

Sweeney then produced and starred in the psychological horror film Immaculate. Sweeney originally auditioned for the project in 2014. Years later, she purchased the rights to the screenplay and hired frequent collaborator Michael Mohan to direct. Sweeney has said that she considered producing a way to create opportunities for herself. Later in 2024, she co-starred in Eden, directed by Ron Howard. Reviewing the film for TheWrap, critic Chase Hutchinson wrote that Sweeney "runs away with the whole thing ... it's her subtle looks and a growing agency that turns Eden into something more ... every moment with her at the forefront is Eden at its best."