Sydney Sweeney on the red carpet, December 2023/Reuters
Sydney Sweeney is a talented and hard-working actress who has worked since the age of 12 to get to where she is right now: the biggest star of the hour.
And yes, she is young, beautiful and blonde.
But the thing is this: and this is known to any woman who has been in the spotlight for more than 15 minutes - the higher her star rises, the more reasons the haters have to cluck.
Sweeney, for her part, just doesn't stop working, and for now it seems that's what silences them more than anything else.
Meanwhile, she seems to be everywhere: in recent months she could be seen in "Just Not You," the top-grossing romantic comedy of recent years, and "Madame Web," Sony's latest superhero disaster.
This week she comes to us with the new horror film "Tahura", in which she plays a pregnant nun.
And it all started with a good girl in Idaho who decided to become an actress when an independent film crew came to her childhood district and held auditions for the role of an extra.
driving the world crazy
Sweeney/GettyImages, Stewart Cook
Like many before her, the actress moved to Los Angeles at a very young age with the goal of becoming a star.
But Sweeney is one of those success stories that tell children about the benefits of persistence: after years in guest and supporting roles in film and television, in 2018 Sweeney was cast in strong roles in two quality series: "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Sharp Objects".
In "The Handmaid's Tale" she is a child bride who is executed for having an illicit affair, in "Sharp Objects" she is a girl who injures herself and is hospitalized in a psychiatric institution.
These are not particularly uplifting roles, but they prepared her nicely for her big breakthrough: "Euphoria".
In HBO's glitzy and dark youth drama, she continued the victim line she started with: Cassie, a fragile, crying girl who is pushed to the edge.
But Sweeney got a chance to prove two things with her: she's an excellent actress, and she's a world bomb.
A ridiculous, human and unforgettable character.
From "Euphoria"/HBO
Most Euphoria stars could lead a housing campaign, but in the show's world, Cassie is the school belle, and that, by and large, is ruining her life.
Cassie is objectified twice - by the characters in the series, and by the series itself.
The boys she falls in love with humiliate her, and the series dances on the line between criticizing our tendency to seduce young and attractive women, to committing the same sin herself, with many nude and sex scenes that on the one hand look very artistic, and on the other hand look like a stubborn attempt to be horny.
At a time when female characters are asked to be "bossy", Cassie is not: she is angry, crying, and shaking.
She embarrasses herself in front of all her friends and anyone who desires her.
It was pathetic, but Sweeney's dedicated performance made many viewers realize that they despised her precisely because they understood her.
Cassie's uncompromising devotion to her lover Nate, the sociopathic hunk, was laughable but sympathetic to anyone who has let too beautiful people make a rag out of them.
Cassie is ridiculed, but Sweeney finds in her what makes her human - and from there, what makes her memorable.
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continued to work and work.
Sweeney/GettyImages, Amy Sussman
Sweeney could have easily been stuck in the frail, stupid blonde tapecast.
One can imagine the ghost of Marilyn Monroe looking down on her and telling her "cutie, be careful".
But Sweeney simply continued to work and work: at the same time as the first season of "Euphoria", she appeared in the role of Patsy in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" by Quentin Tarantino, and at the same time as the second season of "Euphoria" she appeared in another HBO hit, "The White Lotus" - where she played the Olivia, a girl as rich as ice and as cold as ice who spends the summer in the most prestigious hotel in Hawaii.
She and her friend sit most of the first season by the pool and judge the vacationers next to them with beautiful venom.
High schooler Olivia is indifferent, mean and more stable than most of the adults next to her: she and Cassie don't even look like distant cousins, and they are played by the same actress.
This versatility may have caused the members of the Television Academy to award her two Emmy nominations in the same year for her roles in Euphoria and The White Lotus.
Maybe she was just cast at the right time for the right series.
Either way, from that moment Sweeney was on the radar, and it was equally to her detriment: around this point, the haters started celebrating her.
Beautiful virulence.
Sidney Sweeney (left), from "The White Lotus"/Mario Perez, HBO
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It started when she posted on Instagram a celebration with her family under the title "Hoedown": a folk and country dance party that is associated with the rural and conservative community in the USA. The Internet has its own imagination, so Sweeney was soon labeled as a conservative white woman who came from a family of Donald Trump supporters. That summer, she was asked in an interview if She would like to start a family in the near future, to which she said: "I don't make enough money to be able to afford a half-year break from acting.
Nobody supports me financially."
"I have to pay 5% to my lawyer, 10% to my agents, 3% to my business manager.
Every month I also pay my publicist, and it costs more than my mortgage," she said.
"That's why I have to model: if I made a living from acting and nothing else, I wouldn't be able to afford to live in Los Angeles."
Sweeney was simply trying to explain how expensive it is to maintain yourself as a Hollywood star and that replicant salaries don't really cover what the industry demands from those who are just trying to follow the rules.
But many read these quotes - not necessarily in the context in which they were said - and did not understand why they should feel sorry for a woman who closes contracts worth millions of dollars.
A year later, when the actors' and screenwriters' strike showed the world how difficult it is to make a living in Hollywood, Sweeney's words took on a different meaning.
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Fresh breeze.
From "Just not you"/Forum Film
In the same year, one film was released with her participation that did not score the mainstream walls, but in my opinion is her record so far: "Reality", which was screened at the Jerusalem Festival and tells the story of a young woman who worked for the National Security Council and leaked classified documents concerning Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election.
Very few people saw it in the meantime, but for me - this was the stage when I officially understood that this was a real actress, and not another It Girl.
This year Sweeney only continued to soar.
Perhaps precisely because one of the films in which she participated, "Madame Web", was a historic car accident.
The talented Sweeney does a terrible job in it, but she is not alone: everyone involved, from the director to the recording technician, was in awe.
Sweeney is careful to make it clear in interviews that acting and stardom are not an artistic mission or a fun life, but a job for all intents and purposes, and therefore treated her involvement in this catastrophe as another strategic step: "Thanks to this film, I have a relationship with the decision makers at Sony. Thanks to my participation in 'Madame Web,' I could produce and star in 'Just Not You'."
And "Just Not You", where she stars alongside Glenn Powell ("Love in the Sky: Maverick") was the success that many wished for her.
For years, lovers of romantic comedies have longed for a revival of the genre, and after a decade and a half in which superheroes dominated the box office charts, "Just Not You" was a refreshing and sexy breath of fresh air that brought in close to a quarter of a billion dollars.
Even if it wasn't a masterpiece, "Just Not You" was an essential reminder to Hollywood executives - there is a demand for romantic comedies, and there is a demand for light films aimed at an audience over the age of 18. For Sweeney, it was also an opportunity to remind that she also knows how to make happy.
It's a summery and cheerful film that relies overwhelmingly on the sex appeal of its stars, who walk around in swimwear for a significant part of the film.
From the very beginning of the poster, the viewers are expected to want to see the two observe the mitzvah pro varbo.
Sydney Sweeney on the red carpet, August 2023/GettyImages, Kevin Winter
And following that, when Sweeney promoted the two aforementioned films (The Flop and The Schlager), many noticed her natural advantages again. When she participated as a guest host in an episode of "Saturday Night Live", she said goodbye to the viewers and her fellow program members in a dress with a plunging neckline, and did not hesitate to jump with excitement, which provoked the attention of surfers around the world. Interestingly, they are still trying to link Sweeney's success with American conservatism: in 2022 she had to make it clear that she does not support Donald Trump, in 2023 she played a young woman who tried to expose the corrupt way in which he was elected president, and in 2024 Is she dealing with the fact that many think that her large breasts actually...signal the end of an era of progressiveness and political correctness?
Many conservative writers have sought to argue that Sidney Sweeney's breakout is a welcome mainstream return to a model of beauty that has seemingly been abandoned in recent years. "Hooray," they read, " Luscious blondes are back in fashion!", as if they ever went out of style. Ofir Hovav from "Haaretz" wrote about this at length when Sweeney's video from "SNL" gained its puzzling virality. But as she noticed - Sweeney apparently just knows what she's doing.
Like Cassie from Euphoria, she knows very well how people react when they see a good looking blonde with generous cleavage.
Unlike the high school student she plays, Sweeney harnesses all of this to her advantage.
But she does much more than that: she makes sure to be in control of the narrative.
She is signed as a producer on the successful "Rak Na Ata" and also on "Tahora" which is coming out these days.
She works in almost every possible genre - the high-end drama, the gritty indie, the superheroes, the romantic comedy, horror.
Most of the time she also does it perfectly.
The reactions to her success testify to us more than they testify to her.
She is young, beautiful, blonde, but mostly just a good and hard-working actress.
Sometimes that's enough.
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