The summer of Sydney

The White Lotus and Euphoria star talks to Bree Player about fashion, film, becoming Hollywood's next big rom-com sweetheart and why Australia is her second home

- By Bree Player. Photographed by Beau Grealy

Sydney Sweeney could write a love letter to the city that shares her name. As we speak over Zoom, the 26-year-old American asks where I am. “Sydney,” I reply, and her eyes grow wide with yearning. “Lucky!” she exclaims.

She would know. The actor spent several months at the start of 2023 shooting her latest film, Anyone But You, with co-star Glen Powell in Australia’s sparkling harbour city, and it’s very apparent she fell in love with the place while she was here.

Ask most international stars what their favourite part of Sydney was and the majority will say, Bondi. Not Sweeney, who ventured a little further to discover her favourite slice of Aussie paradise. “I went to this place called Palm Beach [on Sydney’s Northern Beaches] and I really, truly loved my time there. I am desperate to go back. Glen and I had lunch at this little restaurant, I can’t remember the name but it’s white, has a big balcony and this really cool giant mirror on the back wall covered in shells.”

“Barrenjoey House,” I offer.

“That’s it! It was awesome. We sat there for hours, downloaded an Australian real estate app, and were looking at what it would cost to live there.”

In their down-time, Sweeney made it her mission to arrange sightseeing adventures for the cast and crew, from donning hot-pink ponchos and riding an open-top bus across the Harbour Bridge in the teeming rain to dancing her butt off in a box at a Harry Styles concert at Accor Stadium. “It was so much fun,” she recalls. “I love Harry. He’s a good friend. It was really cool to go see him perform. And the whole energy of the stadium was awesome.”