Sydney Sweeney's five most underrated roles

‘It girls’ come and go in Hollywood, but Sydney Sweeney is here to stay.

She’s one of the most talked-about stars in the world right now, but it’s fair to say that conversations about her have not been focused enough on her talent as of late.

A dress she wore while hosting Saturday Night Live sparked a claim by one right-winger that she had ended “wokeness”. Sydney herself is pretty sick of the way her body has been ‘politicised, too.

But just as people might seek to narrow and cheapen the discussion around Hollywood’s biggest new star in such a way, her intriguing choice of roles and her acting talents have led her to become one of the most in-demand, and most surprising, actors working in film and TV today.

After making her name in projects like Euphoria, and coming off the back of major projects Anyone But You and Madame Webb (the first being a major success, the second decidedly not so), Sweeney is lining up something completely different for her latest film, Immaculate – an indie horror film which she’s also working on as a producer.

While people know about her biggest roles to date, now is as good a time as any to look back on her most underrated performances – all of which have helped her become one of the leading lights in Hollywood at the age of 26.

Nocturne

If you're after another Sweeney/horror hit after watching Immaculate, then Nocturne is a good place to start.

This underrated effort came as part of the 'Welcome to the Blumhouse' anthology on Amazon Prime Video in 2020, with Sweeney playing a pianist striving for excellence at any cost.

Sweeney’s character, looking to gain an edge on her competitive twin sister after finding a notebook owned by a fellow student who recently lost their life to suicide.

Blumhouse churns out so many films that it’s often easy to overlook gems like this one, and we’d argue this is one of the studio’s most interesting from the last few years.

Nocturne – Official Trailerwww.youtube.com

Everything Sucks!

When most people think of Sweeney’s formative TV projects, they’re a lot more likely to pick out Euphoria or The White Lotus than Everything Sucks! – but there’s a lot to enjoy here.

The Netflix teen series helped to kickstart her career in 2018 and brought her to a wider audience than ever before. There was plenty for Sweeney to get her teeth into in the high school-set series, where she played a theatre student in a coming-of-age series packed with the kind of scenes she’d return to (albeit in much darker and more intense fashion) with Euphoria a year later.

EVERYTHING SUCKS Official Trailer (2018) Teen Comedy, Netflix Series HDwww.youtube.com

The Voyeurs

If you’re not familiar with The Voyeurs, picture an erotic thriller take on Rear Window for the iPhone generation and you’re pretty much there.

She starred alongside Justice Smith in the 2021 Amazon original and by this point in her career she was leading the cast in productions from major studios – it showed Sweeney in charge, stepping things up in her career.

It’s a solidly done, if ever-so-slightly forgettable affair, and the chemistry between Smith and Sweeney never really convinces – but as a Sweeney vehicle it’s still an enjoyable watch and there’s a nice twistiness to the plot and an appealing trashiness thrown in there for good measure.

The Voyeurs - Official Trailer | Prime Videowww.youtube.com

Stolen from the Suburbs

One of Sweeney’s earliest film roles from 2015, and one that even the most diligent of her fans might not be familiar with, Stolen From the Suburbs gave Sweeney the chance to show a pretty comprehensive emotional range from the off.

The movie sees Sweeney play a woman's daughter who is kidnapped by a human trafficking ring. The general consensus of the low-budget film was that the action itself was pretty ho-hum, to say the least, with an audience rating of just 31 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes, but Sweeney got the chance to display her acting chops in one of the first projects with a really substantial role – and the assurance she showed on screen undoubtedly helped pave the way for the rest of her career.

Stolen from the Suburbs - Official Trailer - MarVista Entertainmentwww.youtube.com

Reality

Sweeney’s best role to date? Probably. Her most unexpected? Almost certainly.

This gripping retelling of a curious case in US history sees the actress play Tina Satter, the real-life former NSA translator and U.S Air Force veteran Reality Winner.

The film sees Sweeney deliver lines recorded verbatim from Winner’s real-life conversation with a pair of FBI agents, who told her they had a warrant to search her home after being alerted by “the possible mishandling of classified information”.

It’s certainly a departure from the kinds of roles we’d seen Sweeney in previously, playing the idiosyncratic role with real nuance, helping bring to life an intoxicating whistleblower drama which relied so heavily on her performance.

Reality | Official Trailer | Maxwww.youtube.com

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