Sydney Sweeney Suffered Extreme Bullying Early on in Her Career
It may seem as if Sydney Sweeney materialized out of nowhere, but the actor has been hard at work for years. Sweeney was only 12 years old when she decided to make acting her career and convinced her parents to let her audition for an indie film. Since then, Sweeney has steadily built up her resume with both TV shows and movies and is now a rising star in Hollywood.
But Sweeney’s path to success has been riddled with numerous challenges. From losing the majority of her friends to her parents going financially bankrupt, Sweeney sacrificed a lot for her career. Her acting dreams even caused her to be horribly bullied back in her hometown when she was first starting out as an actor.
Sydney Sweeney was told to kill herself when she started pursuing acting professionally
Sweeney grew up in Spokane, Washington on the border of Washington and Idaho. The Players Table producer cites her childhood as a beautiful time. Because she grew up in a house without the Internet, Sweeney entertained herself with her imagination and the great outdoors. In Spokane, the idea of being an actor seemed pretty far-fetched. So when her peers learned she was traveling to LA for auditions to further her career, she received some serious backlash.
“People from back home … didn’t understand what we were doing, and so I got a lot of hate for that,” Sweeney revealed in an interview with Cosmopolitan. “I was getting so many terrible phone calls and emails and just random text messages from people telling me I should kill myself, that I’m ugly, [and] telling my parents they can’t believe that they’re letting their daughter go to a hell-ridden city.”
The bullying got so bad that Sweeney’s school actually had to intervene. But Sweeney wasn’t just bullied because of her dreams, she was also bullied because of her body as well. The Euphoria actor went through puberty earlier than her peers and she was the subject of some pretty hateful vitriol.
The MMA fighter experienced cyberbullying when people on Twitter called her ugly
Given Sweeney’s personal history with bullying, it isn’t surprising that she felt the need to speak out when she was subjected to some cyberbullying. Back in May 2021, the MMA fighter was trending on Twitter because some users called her ugly. While most people jumped to the actor’s defense, it didn’t shield Sweeney from seeing the negative comments about her appearance.
“I’m reading all these comments saying so much stupid stuff about my appearance,” Sweeney recalled. “I went on social media and cried. People were like, ‘Oh, she’s just looking for attention.’ People literally kill themselves over stuff like this. And people just don’t give a f***. I went on for, like, maybe 12 seconds. I did not think anyone was going to record it. I just needed to let it out. Then it just went everywhere and it became its own beast.”
Sweeney doesn’t regret her tearful Instagram live video
Though Sweeney admits that she’s embarrassed by her video, she doesn’t regret doing it. She knows firsthand what it’s like to be bullied on a regular basis and she’s glad she spoke out about it.
