Sydney Sweeney’s powers as an actor are indisputable. In her melodramatic arc as Cassie Howard on HBO’s Euphoria, Sweeney has run the gauntlet of relationship nightmares (bad boyfriends, bad dads, revenge porn, teen pregnancy), becoming a focal point for debates about the show’s depictions of sexuality and, in 2022, receiving an Emmy nomination. The same year, she was nominated for a second Emmy for her ruthless, zeitgeisty work as Olivia on season one of The White Lotus. On the back of these roles, Sweeney has also established herself as a producer, most notably with 2023’s defiantly popular rom-com Anyone But You, and is about to release the two most ambitious projects she’s made to date: the boxing biopic Christy and the campy erotic thriller The Housemaid. But in the summer of 2025, she became something else too: a market-and-politics-moving force of culture.
