For her starring role in the female boxing drama “Christy,” Sydney Sweeney kept an ice bucket handy.
“I was getting pummeled,” Sweeney said during an interview at the Variety Toronto Film Festival Studio. “They were holding ice packs to my face in between takes. I was getting knocked up. I had some gnarly bruises after that.” One particular scene in which she recreated the famous fight between the film’s real-life inspiration, trailblazing boxing champ Christy Martin, and Laila Ali left her with a “crazy black eye.”
The “Anyone but You” star filmed all of the film’s boxing sequences “back to back to back” over the course of a single week while continuing to train in the off hours. “I’d wrap after a 12-hour shoot and then I’d go train for another two hours. That whole week was grueling.”
The film, which made its world premiere at TIFF on Sept. 5 to rapturous applause, features Sweeney in a way that audiences have never seen her — stripped of glamor, on the ropes and unleashing a full spectrum of emotions as a woman who dominates in the ring but is the victim of domestic violence at home. (Ben Foster plays the trainer/husband who is abusive both physically and emotionally.) For director David Michôd, the choice to cast Sweeney was obvious.
“I knew that she was already a fighter,” Michôd said. “I saw her in that HBO film ‘Reality’ from a few years ago. So I knew she had acting chops, and I was excited by the prospect of taking those acting chops to a bigger audience.”
In order to bulk up for the role, she took an all-you-can-eat approach and quickly found that she was “wearing a lot of elastic waistbands” instead of her usual wardrobe.
“I had a nutritionist work with me as well as a weight trainer and a boxing trainer,” Sweeney explained, “We upped my calorie intake and I started taking a lot of protein shakes and supplements and eating everything. 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. I was constantly burning it all off at the same time. So keeping it all up was quite a challenge.”
The film, which Black Bear will release on Nov. 7 in the thick of awards season, is drawing Oscar buzz for Sweeney. For the actress who has two Emmy nominations under her belt for “Euphoria” and “White Lotus,” she’s taking the talk in stride.
“I’m just glad that Christy’s story is out there,” Sweeney said.
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