<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s 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\u2019s usually not on this short list? Her acting chops.<\/p>\n
Blessed with a certain photogenic look that\u2019s 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 <\/a>(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)<\/a>, and admire the way she sustains the equal strains of camp and madness while fully committing to the bit.<\/p>\n More from Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n It was just a matter of time before Sweeney did what\u2019s 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 \u2014 you could go on. There\u2019s 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 \u201cslumming.\u201d When it succeeds, it\u2019s \u201cserious acting.\u201d<\/p>\n Christy, a look at the triumphs and traumatic experiences of world-class boxer Christy Martin, is Sweeney\u2019s entry into this canon. Part sports-underdog biopic, part domestic-abuse-survivor\u2019s 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\u2019s extraordinary career \u2014 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 \u201clegitimized\u201d women\u2019s boxing \u2014 you can tell that you\u2019re witnessing the saga of a groundbreaker.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s also a showcase, and this is where Sweeney comes in. She trained for months, put on muscle, learned to replicate Christy\u2019s fighting style and her West Virginia accent. The character\u2019s pitch-black hair is the polar opposite of Sweeney\u2019s sunshine-colored locks; when the pugilist later goes blond, it\u2019s dirty and in cornrows. Thanks to the actor\u2019s 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\u2019re 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s controlling, religious and extremely homophobic mother (Merrit Wever), and asks her to marry him. Actually, \u201ccorners\u201d might be a more accurate verb \u2014 Christy wants to box so badly, and to do it on a scale that will make her a champ, that she\u2019s forced to make this Faustian bargain. During the movie\u2019s first hour or so, we recognize that Jim is helping usher her into the winner\u2019s circle, even if he is not a good husband, a great trainer or a nice person at all. When we get to Christy\u2018s 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\u2019t pretty.<\/p>\n Director David Mich\u00f4d, 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\u2019Brian playing Lisa Holewyne, one of Martin\u2019s opponents-turned-friends (and, eventually, her spouse).<\/p>\n There\u2019s never any doubt who movie belongs to, however. The champ\u2019s 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\u2019s willingness to go the distance for a project. For those of us who rolled our eyes at the way she\u2019d 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 \u2014 the kind of prestige project that\u2019s 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\u2019re here for it.<\/p>\n Best of Rolling Stone<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for RollingStone’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here\u2019s 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\u2019s usually not on this short list? Her acting chops. Blessed with a certain photogenic look that\u2019s beguiled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2002155,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[345266,362413,36290,364264,309386],"class_list":["post-2002154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-christy-martin","tag-jim-martin","tag-nicole-kidman","tag-political-affiliation","tag-sydney-sweeney"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Sydney-Sweeney-Throws-a-Mean-Punch.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2002154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2002154\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2002155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2002154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2002154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2002154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}