{"id":183941,"date":"2025-12-14T08:38:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T08:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/183941\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T08:38:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T08:38:07","slug":"sydney-sweeney-looked-unstoppable-but-she-leaves-2025-a-divisive-figure-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/183941\/","title":{"rendered":"Sydney Sweeney looked unstoppable. But she leaves 2025 a divisive figure \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

This column, and others, have had a bit to say about Sydney Sweeney<\/a>. It was in April of 2024 that we celebrated<\/a> the arrival of an old-school movie star. Attracting different sorts of acclaim in the political drama Reality<\/a> and the horror film Immaculate<\/a>, the American firecracker looked to be unstoppable. She entered 2025 as a widely popular phenomenon. Yet she leaves it as a divisive figure. <\/p>\n

It would be absurd to suggest anyone so ubiquitously visible had been \u201ccancelled\u201d, but a huge, self-righteous section of the online commentariat has turned against her.<\/p>\n

Just look at the response to the news that she was to be paired with Ethan Hawke<\/a> in one of Variety magazine\u2019s Actors on Actors videos for awards season. \u201cThe face of a man who just had the most inane conversation of his life,\u201d someone said of Hawke a week before a word of the conversation had been heard. \u201cPoor Ethan, with the gene girl, queen of flop,\u201d another quipped. And on and on. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0Sydney Sweeney\u2019s rise: Hollywood finally has an old-school movie star on its hands, and it has no idea what to doOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

The argument was that Hawke was being placed beside a talentless neophyte who was there only because of her looks. This is not remotely so. She received raves for the TV series Euphoria and The White Lotus. \u201cSweeney\u2019s performance has a superb micro-calibration as she plays it calm and noncommittal,\u201d the Guardian said of Reality in 2023. \u201cSydney Sweeney is extraordinary in this Oscar-tipped movie,\u201d the Times said of her turn as the boxer Christy Martin in the recent biopic Christy<\/a>. <\/p>\n

She earned consistently excellent reviews for that film, but, following its indecently celebrated commercial failure, the online mass gave the impression that Sweeney had made a pig\u2019s ear of the role. \u201cYou\u2019re a cretin and you ruined the film. Period,\u201d the Australian actor Ruby Rose ranted<\/a> on Threads. \u201cChristy deserved better.\u201d<\/p>\n

What the heck is going on? The key fulcrum looks to have been confusion around an advertisement Sweeney fronted for American Eagle jeans in July. Space prohibits comprehensive explanation of the controversy, but many took offense to its tagline: \u201cSydney Sweeney has great jeans.\u201d The implied pun with \u201cgenes\u201d was seen as white supremacist or eugenicist or something. <\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, Sweeney initially stayed mum about the furore, but, after five months of yelling, she eventually allowed herself to express bewilderment. \u201cI don\u2019t support the views some people chose to connect to the campaign,\u201d she told People magazine<\/a> recently. \u201cMany have assigned motives and labels to me that just aren\u2019t true.\u201d<\/p>\n

The other bone of contention was the apparent revelation that she registered to vote as a Republican in Florida on June 14th, 2024. In an earlier era this would have caused barely a flutter of controversy. Barbara Stanwyck, William Holden and Ginger Rogers were all Republican, but no great mass yelled for their cancellation. <\/p>\n

These are, however, more fraught times. The battle lines between Republicans and Democrats seems, in the United States, now comparable to those between mainstream politics and communism in Stanwyck\u2019s time. Too few are prepared to give an inch.<\/p>\n

The Sweeney story has, predictably enough, caused some donning of tin hats in conservative circles. \u201cSydney Sweeney is only \u2018controversial\u2019 because she\u2019s not a Leftie luvvie,\u201d a Daily Telegraph columnist bellowed this week. <\/p>\n

Really? The perception that she opposes lefty luvvieness \u2013 which is still little more than a guess \u2013 has certainly accelerated this unsightly backlash, but it is wrong to imply that \u201conly\u201d right-wing people are so targeted. Any young woman whose ideas look to be above what the mob sees as \u201cher station\u201d can find herself in the crosshairs.<\/p>\n

Consider the case of Rachel Zegler<\/a>. The hugely talented star of Steven Spielberg\u2019s West Side Story<\/a> found herself deluged with online abuse when, cast as the lead in Disney\u2019s recent remake<\/a> of Snow White, she made some mild remarks about the original film\u2019s dubious sexual politics. Her claim that the 1937 version had \u201ca big focus on her love story with a guy who literally stalks her\u201d sent Maga sites cuckoo-bananas. <\/p>\n

Zegler\u2019s advocacy of other progressive issues fanned the conflagration. The (ahem) Daily Telegraph, following the remake\u2019s financial failure, quoted, in a headline, the producer\u2019s son arguing that \u201cSnow White star\u2019s woke politics caused film flop\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the happier entertainment stories of 2025 was about Zegler\u2019s subsequent triumph in a West End production of Andrew Lloyd Webber\u2019s Evita. Each night she emerged to receive hurrahs, as, proud on an exterior balcony, she delivered Don\u2019t Cry for Me Argentina to a packed side street by the Palladium Theatre. <\/p>\n

In two weeks Sweeney appears opposite Amanda Seyfried<\/a> in Paul Feig<\/a>\u2019s psychological thriller The Housemaid. Let us hope the adaptation of Freida McFadden\u2019s hit novel is a success of similar proportions. We need the braying masses to quieten down. We need movie stars to be movie stars. It is, after all, the season of peace and good will.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This column, and others, have had a bit to say about Sydney Sweeney. It was in April of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":183942,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[7496,458,146,28012,3495,85,46,19370,70700,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-183941","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-amanda-seyfried","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-ethan-hawke","12":"tag-for-you","13":"tag-il","14":"tag-israel","15":"tag-paul-feig","16":"tag-rachel-zegler","17":"tag-sydney-sweeney"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183941","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183941"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183941\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183941"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183941"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183941"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}