Here’s a partial list of what we talk about when we talk about Sydney Sweeney: the iconic power of blondes, screen nudity, on-set rumors, female objectification, Hollywood economics, her political affiliation, her figure, her jeans, her genes. What’s usually not on this short list? Her acting chops.
Blessed with a certain photogenic look that’s beguiled moviegoing audiences since the 1930s and cursed with having the conversation start and stop there, Sweeney has become one of the few sure bets for stardom regarding the current A-listers-under-30 set, as well as a brand unto herself. Even before Euphoria helped her level up, she was making the most of whatever modest screen time she got. Her high-degree-of-difficulty turn in Reality (2023), in which she played whistleblower Reality Winner and made dialogue taken directly from federal interrogation transcripts feel natural, attests to her talent. Her comic timing in Anyone But You, released later that same year, is impeccable. Watch the gloriously unhinged final scene in Immaculate (2024), and admire the way she sustains the equal strains of camp and madness while fully committing to the bit.
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It was just a matter of time before Sweeney did what’s become a rite of passage for actors, notably ones whose beauty tends to halt conversations and stop traffic, and are desperate to be taken seriously: The Transformation Role. Charlize Theron has done it, Nicole Kidman has done it, Jessica Chastain has done it — you could go on. There’s usually a physical requirement, as well as severely playing down the high-wattage glamor that got you on red carpets in the first place. Sometimes prosthetics are required, or fake teeth, or horribly unflattering wigs. An element of class-related cosplay tends to come into the picture as well. When it fails, cynics dismiss the whole endeavor as “slumming.” When it succeeds, it’s “serious acting.”
Christy, a look at the triumphs and traumatic experiences of world-class boxer Christy Martin, is Sweeney’s entry into this canon. Part sports-underdog biopic, part domestic-abuse-survivor’s tale, and a textbook example of why turning a true story into tony entertainment is a real tightrope walk, this drama has extremely recognizable beats. Here is the emphasis on the hardscrabble beginnings and obstacles to be overcome, here is the recognition of a truly raw but once-in-a-lifetime talent that converts the non-belivers, here are the early wins and the training montages and the tragedies and the comebacks. Even if you go in knowing nothing about Martin’s extraordinary career — she was the first female boxer to grace Sports Illustrated, she fought in Vegas on the undercard of a Mike Tyson bout, she won the super welterweight title in 2009, and is universally considered the athlete who “legitimized” women’s boxing — you can tell that you’re witnessing the saga of a groundbreaker.
But it’s also a showcase, and this is where Sweeney comes in. She trained for months, put on muscle, learned to replicate Christy’s fighting style and her West Virginia accent. The character’s pitch-black hair is the polar opposite of Sweeney’s sunshine-colored locks; when the pugilist later goes blond, it’s dirty and in cornrows. Thanks to the actor’s sheer dedication and a crack sound-design team, you truly believe that Sweeney has the meanest right cross in 50 states. There are moments when you are aware that you’re watching the labor of acting, seeing all of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into playing Christy, and in that order. And then, occasionally, you’re not seeing an actor at all, just a fighter throwing wicked haymakers in the ring and battling twice as hard to survive outside of it.
Because, as the movie makes clear, the champ was being controlled by a monster. Introduced to a trainer named Jim Martin (played by Ben Foster as a real-life fairy-tale ogre), she fails to impress him until she cleans the clock of a male boxer during sparring. He takes her under his wing, forces her to ditch her girlfriend, wins over Christy’s controlling, religious and extremely homophobic mother (Merrit Wever), and asks her to marry him. Actually, “corners” might be a more accurate verb — Christy wants to box so badly, and to do it on a scale that will make her a champ, that she’s forced to make this Faustian bargain. During the movie’s first hour or so, we recognize that Jim is helping usher her into the winner’s circle, even if he is not a good husband, a great trainer or a nice person at all. When we get to Christy‘s back half, we get the complete picture of how evil and manipulative he is. Google the story if you want to know what happened. The movie presents the rock bottom in full. It isn’t pretty.
Director David Michôd, the Australian filmmaker behind the Freudian gangster opus Animal Kingdom (2010), the dystopian thriller The Rover (2014) and the Shakespeare-meets-Chalamet period piece The King (2019), emphasizes the pain and the grit, as well as the hold the patriarchy has over Christy in ways both big and small. Other talented actors hover in and out of the frame, from Chad L. Coleman turning Don King into a sleazy queenmaker to Katy O’Brian playing Lisa Holewyne, one of Martin’s opponents-turned-friends (and, eventually, her spouse).
There’s never any doubt who movie belongs to, however. The champ’s story is one of being knocked down and getting back up, again and again, and it allows Sweeney to play the scales from victim to survivor, helpless to empowered. Listen closely, and you can already hear the For Your Consideration campaigns slowly thrumming into being. Christy is a decent movie, and a way better proof-of-concept regarding Sweeney’s willingness to go the distance for a project. For those of us who rolled our eyes at the way she’d been recruited, willingly or unwillingly, into the culture wars at the expense of her day job, or who already took her seriously before she donned a Goth-black hair piece and slurred her vowels, it feels like a slight letdown — the kind of prestige project that’s both a challenge and a chance to change the narrative regarding her chops. If this is what it takes to start talking about Sweeney as more than just a pretty face, however, we’re here for it.
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