Sydney Sweeney is an attractive blonde actress who has been on a significant rise for the past three years or so. She’s a big deal because of her Emmy-nominated turn in Euphoria, her Emmy-nominated turn in The White Lotus Season 1, Reality (where she played the lead, Reality Winner), Sharp Objects and most recently, Immaculate and Anyone But You. Sweeney produced the last two films, and Anyone But You was considered an old-school, enjoyable mid-budget rom-com and it’s been Sydney’s biggest success as a producer. Well, the fact that a cute blonde actress is out there, developing and producing projects for herself has apparently broken the brains of some Hollywood producers. The Mail had some exclusive comments from “top female producer” Carol Baum, who basically called Sydney an ugly, untalented flop.
She is one of Hollywood’s hottest young rising stars – recently been hailed as evidence for woke culture being in the decline. But now Sydney Sweeney has been fiercely blasted by one of Hollywood’s top female producers.
‘She’s not pretty, she can’t act,’ claims Carol Baum, whose films include Father of the Bride and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Baum, speaking with New York Times film critic Janet Maslin before an audience of fans following a screening of her 1988 film Dead Ringers starring Jeremy Irons, held nothing back as she began her critique of the 26-year-old actress.
‘There’s an actress who everybody loves now – Sydney Sweeney. I don’t get Sydney Sweeney. I was watching on the plane Sydney Sweeney’s movie because I wanted to watch it,’ she says about Anyone But You. ‘I wanted to know who she is and why everybody’s talking about her,’ she told Maslin and her audience. ‘I watched this unwatchable movie- sorry to people who love this movie – [this] romantic comedy where they hate each other.’
Referencing the producing class she teaches at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, Baum added: ‘I said to my class, “Explain this girl to me. She’s not pretty, she can’t act. Why is she so hot?” Nobody had an answer but then the question was asked, “Well if you could get your movie made because she was in it, would you do it?” I said, “Well that’s a really good question…that’s a very hard question to answer because we all want to get the movie made and who walks away from a green light? Nobody I know. Your job is to get the movie made.”
Baum has produced 34 films starring the likes of Jennifer Aniston, Michael Douglas and Dolly Parton and last year published a book entitled Creative Producing.
True story: Anyone But You looked stupid to me, but I admired the way Sydney hustled for that movie and created a gossip storyline (did she bang Glen Powell and ruin his relationship with Gigi Paris, who knows???), and I admired the fact that she developed it and put the whole thing together (on a budget of $25 million). Even if people weren’t wild about the movie, they appreciated the fact that they had the option of seeing a normie rom-com in the theater. Audiences liked it so much that the film made $218 million at the box office and Sydney and Glen are now looking for another rom-com script to reunite on-screen.
So, what’s my point? Carol Baum is a hater. While Anyone But You is not, like, Citizen Kane, it’s a perfectly fine and successful movie which audiences liked and appreciated. Why this ad hominem attack on Sydney Sweeney’s acting skills and beauty? I actually think Sweeney is an underrated actress – people see a blonde with big boobs, and they think she’s a talentless ditz, but she’s got range. She also has a surprising jolie-laide quality where she can really look downtrodden and mousy.
Add to all of this other nonsense, the whole “Sydney Sweeney destroys wokeness” thing is because she’s a conventionally attractive woman with a great body. It has nothing to do with wokeness, right-wing guys are just idiots.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Cover Images.