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Quick Facts
Biography
Sydney Bernice Sweeney (born September 12, 1997) is an American actress. She gained mainstream attention in the Netflix series Everything Sucks! (2018) for her role as Emaline and has portrayed Eden in the Hulu series The Handmaid's Tale (2018) and Alice in the HBO miniseries Sharp Objects (2018). She has starred as Cassie Howard in the HBO teen drama series Euphoria since 2019 and as Olivia Mossbacher in The White Lotus since 2021. In film, she had a role in Quentin Tarantino's 2019 comedy-drama Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, portraying Dianne "Snake" Lake, a member of the Manson Family.
Early life
Sydney Bernice Sweeney was born on September 12, 1997, in Spokane, Washington, the first of two children of a lawyer mother and a father who works in the medical field. She has a brother, Trent. Sweeney was raised in northwestern Idaho in the state's Panhandle region along the Washington border, at a rural lakeside home that her family has inhabited for five generations.
Sweeney attended Saint George's School in Spokane, and was active in numerous athletics: "I was in every single sport possible", she said. "I was on the soccer team, the baseball team, the snow slalom ski team, I was wakeboarding." She 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 choosing to relocate to Los Angeles when she was 14 years old.
Career
One of Sweeney’s first feature films was a horror film called Along Came the Devil. Sweeney has guest starred in TV shows such as 90210, Criminal Minds, Grey's Anatomy, In the Vault, and Pretty Little Liars.
Sweeney starred as Emaline Addario on the Netflix series Everything Sucks!, which revolved around two groups of high school students in Oregon in 1996. She then appeared in the HBO miniseries Sharp Objects, recurring as Alice, a roommate whom Amy Adams's character meets at a psychiatric facility. Her character was originally supposed to have a smaller role, but the director kept bringing her in for more scenes. For the role, Sweeney studied stories of girls who suffered from mental illness and self-harming, and visited hospitals who had patients who self-harmed. She filmed Everything Sucks! and Sharp Objects concurrently, the former during the week and latter on the weekend.
Sweeney had a role in the thriller film Under the Silver Lake in 2018. She had a recurring role during the second season of the dystopian tragedy series The Handmaid's Tale as Eden Spencer, a pious and obedient girl. She also starred as the heroine in the horror film Along Came the Devil. The next year, she appeared in the drama film Clementine, the coming-of-age film Big Time Adolescence, and Quentin Tarantino's dramedy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Since 2019, Sweeney has portrayed Cassie Howard, a "teenager with a promiscuous reputation", in the drama series Euphoria.
Sweeney starred in the TV film Nocturne. She will also star in The Players Table, a TV series adaptation of Jessica Goodman's novel They Wish They Were Us on HBO Max. Sweeney will also executive-produce with her production company, Fifty-Fifty Films. The adaptation will co-star singer Halsey, with whom Sweeney worked on the video for Halsey's song "Graveyard". In 2021, she appeared in writer and director Mike White's HBO TV series The White Lotus. In March 2022, Sweeny joined Dakota Johnson for upcoming superhero film Madame Web, set in Sony's Spider-Man Universe.
Personal life
Sweeney is a trained MMA fighter, and competed in grappling in high school.
Sweeney has said she creates separate books for each of her characters, which are "interactive diaries/timelines/memory books/pictures of the character’s entire world" from when the character was born to the first page of the script.
In December 2020, The Spokesman-Review reported that Sweeney had donated $12,000 to various restaurants in her hometown of Spokane, which used the funds to serve meals at homeless shelters.
Sweeney has been engaged to her longtime boyfriend, Chicago-based restaurateur Jonathan Davino, since February 2022.
Filmography
Film
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2009 | ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction | Lisa | |
2010 | The Opium Eater | Sarah Detzer | |
Takeo | Samantha Wright | Short | |
Night Blind | Lost Girl | Short | |
The Ward | Young Alice | ||
2013 | Spiders 3D | Emily | |
2014 | Angels in Stardust | Annie | |
2015 | Held | Lily Woods | Short |
Love Made Visible | Leah | Short | |
The Martial Arts Kid | Julia | ||
The Unborn | Little Janey Hutchins | Short | |
Stolen From Suburbia | Emma | ||
2016 | Cassidy Way | Kelsey Connors | |
The Horde | Hailey Summers | ||
2017 | Vikes | Ida | |
Dead Ant | Sam | ||
It Happened Again Last Night | Young Paige | Short | |
2018 | Relentless | Ally | |
The Wrong Daughter | Samantha | ||
Under the Silver Lake | Shooting Star | ||
Along Came the Devil | Ashley | ||
2019 | Big Time Adolescence | Holly | |
Clementine | Lana | ||
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood | Dianne "Snake" Lake | ||
2020 | Nocturne | Juliet Lowe | |
2021 | Downfalls High | Scarlett | |
The Voyeurs | Pippa | ||
Night Teeth | Eva | ||
TBA | National Anthem | TBA | |
Madame Web | TBA |
Television
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2009 | Heroes | Little Girl | Episode: "Chapter Four 'Hysterical Blindness'" |
Criminal Minds | Dani Forester | Episode: "Outfoxed" | |
2010 | Chase | Kayla Edwards | Episode: "Pilot" |
90210 | Girl | Episode: "How Much Is That Liam in the Window" | |
2011 | Kickin' It | Kelsey Vargas | Episode: "Swords and Magic" |
The Bling Ring | Izzy Fishman | TV Movie | |
2014 | Grey's Anatomy | Erin Weaver | Episode: "Don't Let's Start" |
2017 | Monster School Animation | Madeline Rayon | Voice; Episode: "Welcome to Monster School " |
The Middle | Female Student #1 | Episode: "The Final Final" | |
Pretty Little Liars | Willa | Episode: "Till Death Do Us Part" | |
In the Vault | Haley Caren | Web series; 7 episodes | |
2018 | Everything Sucks! | Emaline Addario | Main; 10 episodes |
The Handmaid's Tale | Eden Spencer | Recurring; 7 episodes Nominated—Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series | |
Sharp Objects | Alice | Miniseries; Recurring; Episodes: "Dirt", "Fix" | |
Manic | Missy 'Paper Girl' | TV Short | |
The Wrong Daughter | Samantha | TV Movie | |
2019–present | Euphoria | Cassie Howard | Main cast |
2021 | The White Lotus | Olivia Mossbacher | Miniseries; Main cast |
Robot Chicken | Barbie, Riley Andersen, Cinema Girl (voices) | Episodes: "May Cause a Whole Lotta Scabs"; "May Cause Immaculate Conception" |
Web
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
2020 | Day by Day | Winnie Chapman (voice) | Episode: "Winnie, Betty and... " |
2021 | Downfalls High | Scarlett |
Music video
Year | Title | Artist |
---|---|---|
2019 | "Graveyard" | Halsey |