The actress piled on the pounds and worked out every day for three months to play boxer Christy Martin. “I loved it,” she tells Screen.
Lead actress and producer Sydney Sweeney brought along a few friends and family members when Christy premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in September. Like most people who hear the logline for the based-on-fact sports drama, they went in expecting an uplifting story about boxer Christy Martin, who broke new ground during the 1990s and triumphed as a female prizefighter in a tough man’s world.
“They had no idea,” admits Sweeney. “I didn’t really prepare them.” They were unaware of the dramatic turns in the life of Martin (spoiler alert) – a closet lesbian who spent much of her career being abused by her coercive husband and trainer Jim Martin (played in the film by Ben Foster), who ultimately attempted to murder her. At one point during the gruelling final act, Sweeney looked over at her guests. “It was just tears and sobbing,” she remembers.
The actress herself went through a similarly emotional experience when she first read the script. At the time, she was developing another true story about a female fighter, so when her agent gave her Christy to read during a flight, she was not sure about it. She felt differently by the time the plane landed.
“I was completely shocked,” she tells Screen International on the day of Christy’s UK premiere at the BFI London Film Festival, ahead of the film’s US and UK release via Black Bear in November. “I was crying my eyes out reading the second half of the script.” She also appreciated the layers to the character, particularly the contrast between her public persona and private life.
“I love playing complicated female characters, and she had a lot of very complex situations and characteristics that fascinated me,” says Sweeney. “So I called my team and said, ‘I have to be a part of this in some capacity. Even if they don’t want me to play Christy, let me produce it. I want to be a part of bringing her story to the big screen because more people deserve to know who she is.’”
Physical change
A couple of years ago, it might have been a stretch to imagine Sweeney embody the stronger, heavier Martin. The actress was best known for playing “blonde crazy bombshell” (her words) Cassie in HBO hit Euphoria and reinvigorating the big-screen romantic comedy with Glen Powell in 2023’s Anyone But You. But Christy co-writer/director David Michôd (Animal Kingdom) was impressed by her performance as intelligence leaker Reality Winner in Tina Satter’s taut docu-drama Reality, so he expressed confidence Sweeney could do it when the pair met on Zoom.
Undergoing such a physical change would be demanding, he warned. “I will lose myself completely,” Sweeney recalls promising him. “You won’t even recognise me. That’s how bad I want Christy.”
Sure enough, after boarding the project with her production company Fifty-Fifty Films, Sweeney researched Martin deeply – immersing herself in fight footage and interviews, as well as meeting, sparring and ultimately befriending Martin herself – and spent three months weight- and fight-training with nutritionist Grant Roberts and boxing coach Matt Baiamonte, respectively.
“I worked out every single day,” says Sweeney, who trained in kickboxing and grappling as a teen. “I would weight train in the morning, then box two-to-three hours in the middle of the day, and then another hour of weight training at night. I put on 35lbs. There were times where I thought, I can’t eat any more. I’m going to be sick. And I was physically so exhausted, especially when we started filming because if I stopped then I’d lose everything that I’d gained. But I also felt so strong.”
That physicality is on display in the fight scenes, which were choreographed to match footage of the original boxing matches and involved full contact. “Usually in these fighting sequences, you have to cut around it, it’s choppy, you’re on the back of the heads mostly,” she explains. “But I told David, ‘There’s so much of what’s happening with Christy in this ring. That’s her biggest outlet. I don’t want to not see that.’ So we were able to live in these moments longer, and you see me getting punched in the face. Of course, we did it in a safe manner. We weren’t going 100% at each other. But we were connecting. There would be some bloody noses. And I had concussions. It was full-on. I loved it.”
Amid the praise for Sweeney’s commitment and transformation, she has been described as a shapeshifter. Yet that, to her, is just an inherent part of what she does rather than a specific goal. “I mean, I’m an actor. That’s what I want to do,” she says with a shrug. While growing up in the small town of Spokane, Washington, she created “all these imaginary friends and imaginary worlds, and all I knew was I wanted to play other people. So, for me, it’s just searching for something that challenges me in new ways.”
Another adjective that has recently been attached to Sweeney is ‘fearless’. That one sits a little better with her. “I’ve always approached things as, if it scares me, then I should probably do it. Everything you see me do scares me. I’m facing my fears. So I never know what I’m going to do next because it’s exciting not to know. And it’s also exciting to do things that people don’t think you’re right for.”
Next projects
Sweeney is certainly not slowing down in making these choices. When she speaks to Screen, she has come from filming season three of Euphoria the previous day, an experience she describes as like “getting to go home”. Her next film is Paul Feig’s psychological thriller The Housemaid, released in the US on December 19 and a week later in the UK, for which she had to shed the Christy pounds in seven weeks (“that was a lot of pressure, for sure”), and co-stars with Amanda Seyfried (“I love her, she is my dream sister; I hope we do many, many more projects together”).
Sweeney has also announced she is producing and starring in Justin Lin’s remake of 1964 French caper That Man From Rio (set up at Apple TV), and in January will start shooting Fifty-Fifty Films and Miramax’s Scandalous!, playing Kim Novak embarking on her then-controversial relationship with Sammy Davis Jr (David Jonsson). Her Euphoria co-star Colman Domingo is directing. “It’s such an interesting time in Hollywood that I think can still parallel to today,” says Sweeney. “Colman is going to blow it out of the water. It’s going to be spectacular.”
Then there are the “multiple projects I have been pitching and developing that I’m just a producer on”. Sweeney’s approach to these is no different to how she approaches acting, she insists. “It’s whatever excites me or challenges me. Or where I can help use my platform and my voice. But I don’t have a formula or a plan. It’s just discovering and figuring out what I love the most.”
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