'Euphoria' Star Sydney Sweeney Talks Preparing For Her Roles

Born on September 12, 1977, Sydney Sweeney rose to the spotlight in a short while due to her powerful yet uncomplicated roles on big-screen. In 2018, she appeared as Eden Spencer in "The Handmaid's Tale" and Alice in "The Sharp Objects."

Almost a year later, she landed a role on HBO's blockbuster movie, "Euphoria." Featuring Cassie Howard, she plays the role of an ice skating teenager who deals with sexual coercion and slut shaming.

She's also landed roles in movies like "Big Time Adolescence," "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," and "Nocturne."

She recently made headlines when she took to her Instagram Live to talk about how words from people about her outlook hurt and how they needed to think about the effects of their words before they spoke.

"I am trending on Twitter right now for being ugly," she reported in NME. "And I would never actually do this, like ever. But I think it's essential for people to see how words affect people."

Even with her talents and skills, it takes a lot to model a character. In many ways, the characters are entirely different from their actors. So how does Sweeney prepare for her roles?

Sweeney wanted to get into the character's mind that she was to play for John Carpenter's "The Ward."

Although she wasn't older than 12 at the time, she understood the importance of getting into the role. Her character had to be emotional, and being locked in a dark state was the only place to get there. Due to that, she persuaded her parents to lock her in a basement for days on end.

In an interview with Backstage, her parents considered it weird and thought it was strange at the time, but they trusted her and went with her requests.

Although the Washington native has been acting for a decade, it's still challenging to play a different character from her.

However, she developed a distinct albeit strange preparation process to help her get into the character and authentically birth them.

In an interview with Story+Rain, she disclosed how she prepared for her character in "Euphoria."

"I create books to build the characters that I play. I create an interactive timeline, journal, diary of their entire lives from the day they were born to the script's first page. I spend a couple of hundred dollars at Michael's! I buy a book, and I decorate everything and write tons of stuff down. There are sections to each book. There's the timeline of her whole life, a section for her relationships, her memories, what her world looks like. And I have a section for where the script starts. I believe that when a character is in a scene, she's still living. So I have a section for what happens between every scene."

When asked about the period she starts this preparation, she responds, "Usually on the day I get the role, I'm like, "I'm going to Michael's! I'm getting my book!'. And it depends on how long I have to finish it. I typically finish it before my first day of filming. For Handmaid's Tale, I had a week to make her book, and for Euphoria, I had a whole summer to make her book."

If there's one thing that the iconic Sweeney would jump at, it'll be playing roles that scare her.

All of her eventful characters have been dangerous. However, there's been variety in her character. For example, her character in 'Everything Sucks!" was very distinguishable from her character in "The Handmaid's Tale."

In every role she plays, Sweeney has the rare ability to inject compassion, hope, and a tinge of romanticism into otherwise scary plots. "I love characters that scare me," Sweeney said over the phone to Vogue recently. "If I read it, and I'm scared of not knowing if I can pull it off, those are the roles I tend to want. I like challenging myself."

When she was a teenager, Sweeney got into martial arts. She was trained by Gene Bell, as disclosed in an interview. She competed throughout high school and later won first place in a competition for mainly boys. "I love fighting; it's so much fun," she confesses in the interview. 

In the same interview, she shared what the boys in her school probably thought of her. "Those guys were probably saying, 'Oh, we didn't want to hurt her,' but they were trying. Everyone broke a sweat!"