{"id":204496,"date":"2025-09-06T08:18:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-06T08:18:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/204496\/"},"modified":"2025-09-06T08:18:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-06T08:18:10","slug":"sydney-sweeney-joins-best-actress-oscar-race-with-christy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/204496\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Sweeney Joins Best Actress Oscar Race With ‘Christy’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA thin best actress Oscar race was jolted on Friday afternoon by the Toronto International Film Festival\u2019s world premiere of David Michod<\/strong>\u2019s Christy<\/a>, a drama centering on a performance by Sydney Sweeney<\/a><\/strong> as the trailblazing female boxer Christy Martin<\/strong>, which was greeted with a prolonged standing ovation<\/a> in the Princess of Wales Theater. Sweeney, who was also a producer of the film, gives a committed, showy, impressive turn as Martin \u2014\u00a0one that Martin herself has vocally applauded, including during an emotional post-screening Q&A \u2014\u00a0and believe it or not, I think she may get nominated.<\/p>\n

\n\tSweeney, who is just 27, became a world-famous actress and sex symbol through the HBO drama series Euphoria and The White Lotus, both of which brought her Emmy nominations. Recently, though, she has become a polarizing person, with\u00a0her political affiliation, her dating life and, yes, her jeans commercial, all causing a lot of controversy. But even her skeptics, upon seeing Christy, may have to acknowledge her considerable commitment and talent (which was previously most evident in the little-seen 2023 TV film Reality, in which she played American intelligence leaker Reality Winner<\/strong>, and for which she deserved an Emmy nomination).<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Christy, Sweeney, donning short black hair and a muscular physique that she built through diet, exercise and boxing training over a period of months, looks nothing like herself as Martin, n\u00e9e Salters, a West Virginian who stumbled into a boxing career in the 1980s and dominated her sport as no woman had before \u2014\u00a0all while remaining a closeted lesbian and suffering increasingly terrible abuse at the hands of her considerably older coach\/husband Jim (Ben Foster<\/a><\/strong>, also unrecognizable).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film\u2019s depiction of a female fighter\u2019s rise is somewhat familiar\u00a0\u2014 we\u2019ve seen variations of it before with Michelle Rodriguez<\/strong> in Karyn Kusama<\/strong>\u2019s Girlfight (2000), Hilary Swank<\/strong> in Clint Eastwood<\/strong>\u2019s Million Dollar Baby (2004) and Halle Berry<\/strong> in Bruised (2020), which Berry herself directed \u2014 and a film about a gifted female athlete being subjected to horrific domestic abuse has also been done before, very impressively, in I, Tonya (2017). But the performances by Sweeney, as the lead, and Foster, in support, as well as the specifics of the true story that inspired Christy, help to keep this one engaging and memorable.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn terms of Christy\u2019s awards<\/a> fate, a lot will depend on the abilities of Black Bear,\u00a0one of the production companies behind it,\u00a0to effectively distribute and campaign for it; Christy will be the first film ever released through the company\u2019s new distribution arm<\/a>, which has given it an awards-friendly theatrical release date of Nov. 7. Fairly or not, it will also hinge upon Sweeney\u2019s willingness and ability to address the extracurricular things that are currently distracting people from her work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A thin best actress Oscar race was jolted on Friday afternoon by the Toronto International Film Festival\u2019s world…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":204497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5800,78080,110971,112783,171,15801,112784,21218,64287,111058,111060,77123,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-204496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-awards","9":"tag-ben-foster","10":"tag-christy","11":"tag-david-michu00f4d","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-oscars","14":"tag-oscars-2026","15":"tag-sydney-sweeney","16":"tag-tiff","17":"tag-tiff-2025","18":"tag-toronto-2025","19":"tag-toronto-film-festival","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115156373077712736","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/204497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}