For her starring role in the female boxing drama “Christy,” Sydney Sweeney didn’t just act the part—she lived it, enduring a physically grueling transformation that saw her gain 30 pounds and film punishing fight sequences that left her with a constant need for an ice pack and a collection of gnarly bruises. “I was getting pummeled,” Sweeney revealed during an interview at the Variety Toronto Film Festival Studio, describing the intense process of recreating the famous fights of trailblazing boxing champ Christy Martin. “They were holding ice packs to my face in between takes. I was getting knocked up. I had some gnarly bruises after that.” One particularly brutal scene, a recreation of Martin’s famous bout with Laila Ali, resulted in a “crazy black eye,” a testament to the raw physicality Sweeney brought to the role, filming all of the boxing sequences back-to-back over a single week while continuing to train for two hours after wrapping 12-hour shoot days.
The film, which made its world premiere at TIFF to rapturous applause, features Sweeney in a way audiences have never seen her—stripped of glamour, emotionally raw, and unleashing a full spectrum of emotions as a woman who dominates in the ring but becomes a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her trainer and husband, played by Ben Foster.
To physically embody the role of a fighter, Sweeney took an all-you-can-eat approach, working with a nutritionist and trainers to radically up her calorie intake. “I ate a lot of Smuckers, a lot of PB and J sandwiches, milkshakes, kind of just constantly always eating because we were so active,” she explained, noting that she was “constantly burning it all off at the same time,” a process that found her trading her usual wardrobe for elastic waistbands to accommodate her changing physique.
For director David Michôd, the choice to cast Sweeney was obvious, having seen her formidable acting chops in the HBO film ‘Reality’ and believing she could bring that intensity to a bigger audience, a bet that appears to have paid off as the film, set for a November 7th release by Black Bear in the thick of awards season, is already drawing significant Oscar buzz for her transformative performance. Yet, for the actress, who already has two Emmy nominations for “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” the acclaim is secondary
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