Sydney Sweeney Says The Way People Talk About Her Body Makes Her Feel Dehumanized

NBC

Rising star Sydney Sweeney, who first made a name for herself on the hit HBO series Euphoria, is one of the fastest-rising actors in Hollywood these days.

While Sweeney is obviously an incredibly talented actress — Quentin Tarantino gave her a role in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, while her newest film, a religious horror titled Immaculate, is earning her career-best reviews — there’s also the undeniable fact that her status as a sex symbol has helped raise her profile.

In her Saturday Night Live promo from earlier this year, for example, she joked about the reason why “weirdly” most of her fans are men. There was also the dress she wore to Vanity Fair‘s Academy Awards afterparty, which went viral and earned her comparisons to Marilyn Monroe.

Sweeney’s physical attributes have also led to an undeniably weird conversation online, with conservatives somehow turning her features into a culture war victory — claiming that her beauty is somehow triggering liberals  — while websites are writing hot take articles such as “Sydney Sweeney breast size: they’re not that big” or “Is Sydney Sweeney’s hotness the ‘death of woke?'”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, all of those conversations about her body have led to Sweeney feeling some type of way, as she recently opened up about being “dehumanized” by the constant attention paid to her body.

“I see it, and I just can’t allow myself to have a reaction. I don’t know how to explain it – I’m still trying to figure it out myself,” Sweeney said in a recent interview with Variety.

“People feel connected and free to be able to speak about me in whatever way they want, because they believe that I’ve signed my life away. That I’m not on a human level anymore, because I’m an actor,” she said. “That these characters are for everybody else, but then me as Sydney is not for me anymore. It’s this weird relationship that people have with me that I have no control or say over.”

The 26-year-old certainly hasn’t been shy when it comes to her body, as she’s done multiple birthday suit scenes throughout her career, with a couple occurring in Euphoria and the others in the 2021 thriller The Voyeurs. Her sex appeal was also featured heavily in the marketing for her $200 million-grossing rom-com Anyone But You, as well.

Immaculate will be released in movie theaters in the United States on Friday, March 22. You can watch the official trailer for the film below.