Sydney Sweeney‘s résumé in the last few years has spanned rom-com, horror, action, thriller and now sports drama — and that’s exactly how she likes it.
At Hollywood’s AFI Fest on Saturday, the star debuted Christy, which tells the story of Christy Martin — the most successful female boxer of the ’90s who was also dealing with a tumultuous personal life behind the scenes.
“Christy’s story is just absolutely phenomenal and even if I wasn’t going to act in it, I wanted to be a part of it in some capacity to bring it to the screen, for more people to know about her and raise awareness for her story and how incredible of an advocate and role model that she is,” Sweeney told The Hollywood Reporter, as she both stars in and produced the film. “But also as an actor, it’s just a dream to be able to play all these different characters. That’s why I fell in love with this, getting to put on all these different hats and shoes and lose myself and become other people.”
To become Martin, she put in months of training and gained 30 pounds, recounting at the premiere how “every single fight that you see is the exact same fight that she had in the ring. So every combination, everything you see is real life. So it was not only just learning how to box — I had to memorize her exact movements in every single fight.”
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When it came time for Martin to finally see the completed film, Sweeney said she was in tears when the real-life boxer called to praise her. “I remember she said, ‘I felt like you went back in time and you were there during these moments in my life because I don’t know how else someone would have known that I talk like that, walk like that, move like that.’ And that was just an amazing feeling to be able to hear that.”
After such a transformative experience, does that change what Sweeney — who has The Housemaid and the third season of Euphoria coming up — wants to do next? “Yes and no. I’m always kind of looking for something completely new, but everyone’s like, ‘Sydney Sweeney’s doing that?’” she joked. “It’s exciting to challenge myself, so I look for things that challenge me in new ways or excite me in new ways.”
Christy hits theaters Nov. 7.
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