{"id":320759,"date":"2025-08-05T20:59:14","date_gmt":"2025-08-05T20:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/320759\/"},"modified":"2025-08-05T20:59:14","modified_gmt":"2025-08-05T20:59:14","slug":"sydney-sweeney-the-hollywood-up-and-comer-who-started-a-culture-war-sydney-sweeney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/320759\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Sweeney: the Hollywood up-and-comer who started a culture war | Sydney Sweeney"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost exactly three years ago, in July 2022, the actor Sydney Sweeney<\/a> gave an interview<\/a> to the Hollywood Reporter that was refreshingly frank about finances.<\/p>\n

At the time, Sweeney was 24, fresh off the contentious buzz of Euphoria\u2019s second season, and undeniably on the up in Hollywood as one of gen Z\u2019s very few in-demand actors. And yet, as she told the magazine, she did not have the money to cover even a six-month break from the industry. Unlike some of her Euphoria peers, Sweeney is not a nepo baby; she was raised middle-class in northern Idaho and Spokane, Washington, and began working as a child actor at 13. She acted continuously throughout her teens \u2013 on Criminal Minds and Grey\u2019s Anatomy, then small roles on prestige projects like Sharp Objects, The Handmaid\u2019s Tale and Quentin Tarantino\u2019s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood \u2013 because there was no fallback cushion. \u201cI don\u2019t have someone supporting me, I don\u2019t have anyone I can turn to, to pay my bills or call for help,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Even after working on a hit HBO show, which did allow her to buy a house in LA, money was tight. \u201cThey don\u2019t pay actors like they used to, and with streamers, you no longer get residuals,\u201d Sweeney explained. \u201cThe established stars still get paid, but I have to give 5% to my lawyer, 10% to my agents, 3% or something like that to my business manager. I have to pay my publicist every month, and that\u2019s more than my mortgage.\u201d Sweeney spoke with the authority and detail of someone who actually had to review her budget every month \u2013 for the stylist, the publicist, the makeup, the travel, the unspoken demands of being a fame-aiming young actor in the Instagram age, and particularly a young beautiful woman. Hence, her many brand deals \u2013 Miu Miu, Armani, Laneige. \u201cIf I just acted, I wouldn\u2019t be able to afford my life in LA,\u201d she said. \u201cI take deals because I have to.\u201d<\/p>\n

I still think about this interview whenever Sweeney\u2019s name comes up, which is too often lately. For one, it\u2019s still the most transparent I\u2019ve ever heard an actor of her cohort be about money \u2013 no one is talking about paying their publicist or their mortgage \u2013 and two, it helps explain her increasingly omnipresent and fractious brand deals<\/a> that have arguably eclipsed her acting work. Sweeney doesn\u2019t just rep high-end fashion labels like Miu Miu, typical for actors attempting to enter the rarefied field of movie stardom; she\u2019s now also selling soap allegedly containing a \u201ctouch\u201d of her bathwater for Dr Squatch, ice-cream for Baskin-Robbins, and fuzzy pink loafers for who knows who. You may have heard that she\u2019s recently found herself in the culture-war crosshairs<\/a> over some ads for American Eagle<\/a>. As the camera pans over a horizontal Sweeney zipping up her tight blue jeans, she says in typical monotone: \u201cGenes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair color, personality, and even eye color. My jeans are blue.\u201d Another spot finds her admonishing a wandering camera away from her two most talked-about assets \u2013 \u201ceyes up here\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The ad, predictably, caused a stir on an internet where everything is now ragebait<\/a> \u2013 the posting left said its invocation of Americana and \u201cgreat genes\u201d dogwhistled white supremacy, the Maga right celebrated it as a nail in the coffin of \u201cwokeness\u201d. (For what it\u2019s worth, American Eagle has said that the campaign \u201cis and always was about the jeans\u201d.) Trump posted about it on Truth Social. And all of that was before it was revealed that Sweeney registered as a Republican in Florida in June 2024.<\/p>\n

All of this, it must be noted, has happened without Sweeney publicly saying a thing. (One can assume, based on her comments about money and an old social media brouhaha about Maga family members, that she supported Donald Trump<\/a> in 2024, and that she moved to Florida for tax reasons. But until Sweeney confirms anything, these remain assumptions.) How does a relatively successful Hollywood actor with at least one box office hit under her belt \u2013 that would be the middling but popular 2024 romcom Anyone But You \u2013 end up this polarizing?<\/p>\n

Two separate but inextricable things: an incendiary combination of social media\u2019s death spiral into hollow, fleeting culture wars, and a career spent walking the perilously thin line between poking fun at male egos and inflating them. The former is more easily identified \u2013 the internet culture Substack Garbage Day<\/a> traced the American Eagle controversy to a familiar pattern of activity on X, a site that is a fraction of the size it used to be and is now about 75% bots; the remaining holdouts are \u201cconservative aggregators, business world influencers, celebrity stan accounts, and libs who won\u2019t leave the site and still post like it\u2019s 2018\u201d. The ad, an artless mix of lowest-common denominator triggers, worked on all four groups. The cycle frothed enough on X over a weekend to get picked up by Fox News, then the most smug Maga politicians looking for a dunk, and then, inevitably, the president who must always get in on the attention. In the posting economy, all that matters is that the controversy feels real, and everyone is talking about it.<\/p>\n

Whatever the actual size of the outrage \u2013 I, for one, sense more fatigue than actual anger \u2013 the chatter does represent a natural endpoint to Sweeney\u2019s longstanding tactic of being the first to acknowledge, and now bank on, male attention on her breasts, and to be ruthlessly pragmatic about business. Both are dubious tactics with, I\u2019d argue, diminishing returns. I have been a fan of Sweeney\u2019s since she broke out as a terrifyingly droll gen Z menace on the first season of The White Lotus in 2020, and I date the shift to 2022, around the time of that landmark THR interview. When I interviewed<\/a> Sweeney in 2021, the then-23-year-old was as open about her business ambitions \u2013 getting a bachelor\u2019s degree to prevent getting \u201cfucked over\u201d by contract negotiations, producing her own projects \u2013 as she was wary about the internet\u2019s outrage machine. She was promoting her erotic thriller The Voyeurs, in which she appeared nude, and dealing with the aftermath of nude screenshots from Euphoria making the rounds online. Her strategy for handling it all, she told me, was dissociation: \u201cI never actually put Syd out there,\u201d she said. \u201cNo one really knows Syd.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney in Anyone But You. Photograph: Brook Rushton\/AP<\/p>\n

In the years since, Sweeney seems to have adopted a more offensive approach to the attention \u2013 and her elevation by the male right as, to quote<\/a> the New Yorker\u2019s Lauren Michele Jackson, \u201crejoicing in a perceived return to a bygone beauty standard in the wake of all that overzealous feminism they blame on the left\u201d \u2013 by turning it into money and a punchline. She poked fun at boob fixation with a Hooters skit on SNL<\/a>; she wore a sweatshirt blaring \u201cSORRY FOR HAVING GREAT TITS AND CORRECT OPINIONS\u201d; she routinely addresses the boobs in the room with a broad-like confidence. \u201cThe biggest misconception about me is that I\u2019m a dumb blonde with big tits,\u201d she said in an interview<\/a> last year. \u201cI\u2019m naturally a brunette.\u201d Cue laughs. At the same time, she\u2019s exemplified the pop feminist mantra of getting one\u2019s bag \u2013 starring in the dreadful Madame Web was a \u201cbusiness decision\u201d<\/a> to network with Sony execs and get her planned Barbarella remake greenlit and Anyone But You sold, which she successfully marketed on her own TikTok. Taking every brand deal while producing would-be auteur horror with Immaculate.<\/p>\n

All of this has, unfortunately, overshadowed a promising dramatic acting career, as demonstrated by a remarkable turn in Reality<\/a>, as a real-life whistleblower brimming with anxiety and righteousness; in The Voyeurs<\/a>, a throwback erotic thriller that would have made more of a splash had it not been dropped on Amazon; on Euphoria, where she imbued the beleaguered Cassie with a real sense of teenage volatility. Amid the political controversy, Sweeney remains, as ever, booked and busy. She\u2019s making an awards play with Christy, as the 90s boxer Christy Martin, aiming critical buzz with The Housemaid, Paul Feig\u2019s film alongside Amanda Seyfried. She\u2019s locked down two huge video game remakes with Michael Bay<\/a> and Jon M Chu<\/a>, secured the role of 50s bombshell Kim Novak in Colman Domingo\u2019s directorial debut Scandalous!<\/a>, just appeared alongside Julianne Moore in yet another forgettable Apple TV+ film. On the acting side, she\u2019s still the young woman from three years ago, clear-eyed about the industry, trying everything, lining up the work. For all our sakes, let\u2019s hope the conversation gets back there, too.<\/p>\n