Sydney Sweeney, since her breakout role on HBO's “Euphoria,” has worked to prove that she has a lot more to offer than just her looks.
In recent years, the “White Lotus” actress has diversified her portfolio to showcase her acting skills and has flexed her muscles as a producer with the films “Immaculate” and “Anyone but You.” Despite her efforts, the 27-year-old star says, she feels that Hollywood's outside support for female creatives, especially other women with well-established careers, has been just lip service.
“Everyone says this whole industry is, 'Women empowering other women.' “None of that is happening,” he told Vanity Fair in an interview published Wednesday. “This is all false and a cover for all the other things they say behind everyone's backs.”
Sweeney, founder of Fifty-Fifty Films, denounced Tinseltown's supposedly faux feminism months after “Father of the Bride” producer Carol Baum dismissed its star power.
Speaking in April at a New York screening of his 1988 film “Dead Ringers,” Baum said: “[Sweeney’s] She's not pretty, she can't act. Why is it so good? Sweeney's team responded quickly, regretting “that a woman in a position to share her knowledge and experience would decide to attack another woman.”
“If that's what [Baum’s] He learned in his decades in the industry and feels it is appropriate to teach his students, that is shameful,” a spokesperson for Sweeney told The Times in April. “Unfairly discrediting a fellow producer speaks volumes about Ms. Baum's character.”
Baum reportedly regretted his comments, but the pain clearly remained for Sweeney.
“It's very disheartening to see women tearing down other women, especially when women who are successful in other areas of their industry see younger talent working very hard,” Sweeney said in Vanity Fair's 2025 Hollywood issue.
This sense of competition and the tendency to disparage and exclude other women could be a characteristic of Hollywood rather than a bug, Sweeney said. Although it could be a “generational problem,” she said, women grew up believing that only a woman can be successful, whether she gets the man or climbs the ladder. “There is only one woman who can be, I don't know, anything,” he added.
Sweeney, who did not mention Baum by name, told the magazine that he is simply doing his best to continue making a name for himself. Still, he asked, “Why are you attacking me?”
Years before the Baum insult, the two-time Emmy nominee had been candid about her journey to Hollywood, telling The Times in 2022 that it had not been easy at all. For a while, he said, he had been “fighting, fighting, fighting [for jobs].” When she began acting in her teens, the stress of growing up also came with the pressure of the industry.
“When you're 16 and you don't really like yourself, and you're trying to figure out what the hell is going on in your body and your makeup and your hormones, and people are telling you that you're no good, that's enough, that weight is very heavy,” Sweeney said at the time.
While Sweeney may feel that other women in Hollywood don't support her, she told The Times that she can rely on her parents “who, no matter what, believed in me.”
Times staff writer Nardine Saad contributed to this report.
