Sydney Sweeney Built an Imaginary World Where She Was a Spy

It’s a huge day for Sydney Sweeney. The 24-year-old actor just nabbed her very first Emmy nomination for her role in HBO’s wildly popular, Euphoria. Moments later, she received her second nomination for her role in The White Lotus. Sweeney has been candid that playing Cassie and Olivia has been a dream come true for her. In fact, with her overactive imagination, it almost seems like she was destined to be an actor.

Sydney Sweeney realized she had a big imagination at a very young age

While Sweeney currently owns a home in Los Angeles, she originally hails from Spokane, Washington. The actor-producer grew up surrounded by nature in a home without Internet. This unique upbringing led to the actor having a vivid imagination. As a young child, Sweeney would create entire worlds in her backyard just so she could navigate through them. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Sharp Objects alum got candid about the way her imagination manifested in her youth.

The ‘Euphoria’ actor build an imaginary world where she was a spy in training

“I grew up building all of these imaginary worlds and creating imaginary friends; I would build out their lives and would become someone else in those moments,” Sweeney shared. “So I have a lot of practice.” But what did the worlds consist of? Fans familiar with The White Lotus actor won’t be surprised to learn that there was an athletic component to one of her imaginary worlds.

“Oh my God, I’ve never told anyone this, but one of my favorite imaginary worlds was that I was at spy school, training to become an undercover spy,” Sweeney explained. “I’d build obstacle courses throughout my house and train myself.”

The Emmy nominee used PowerPoint to convince her parents to let her become an actor

Eventually, Sweeney realized that actors were paid to live truthfully in imaginary worlds. So, when an indie zombie film came to her hometown, she begged her parents to audition. In order to get them to take her seriously, she created a PowerPoint presentation of everything that could happen in five years if they let her go out for the film. Impressed by how seriously she was taking her proposed career, they let her audition and she booked the part.

Though Sweeney’s path to becoming a successful working actor took more than five years, her hard work is paying off. Now that she’s found her footing in acting, she has moved on to producing. In 2020, she founded her production company, Fifty-Fifty Films. Her company is prioritizing women-led stories and Sweeney has already secured the rights to several projects. Thus far, her most buzzy project is The Players Table, which has already found a home at HBO Max.

Sweeney’s venture into producing allows her to build more imaginary worlds

Funnily enough, producing gives Sweeney the opportunity to help create imaginary worlds just like she did as a kid. However, she’s not expecting producing to be a cakewalk. “It reminds me of the way I would world-build when I was little, and I realized I wanted to do that more,” Sweeney shared about producing. “It’s going to be a long road. I started acting when I was 12 or 13, and now 10 years later, you’re just now talking to me. But I love to build things from the ground up, and whether it takes 10 years or 20, I’m putting my heart and soul into it.”