The Surprising Job Sydney Sweeney Had Before Her Acting Fame

Sydney Sweeney is no Hollywood royalty. She doesn't come from a family of artists or anything of the sort. Instead, the "Euphoria" star was raised by a former criminal defense lawyer who quit her career to be a stay-at-home mother and a father who worked in the hospitality industry. The Sweeneys lived a comfortable life in the mountains of Idaho, where acting was not likely to be a part of anyone's career plan — including Sweeney's. But an indie movie changed that.

At age 12, Sweeney convinced her parents to let her audition for a film, and that quickly became her destiny. By the following year, she had come up with a business plan and convinced her parents to uproot their entire existence and relocate to Los Angeles. Their life became everything but comfortable. "I watched my parents lose a lot. We filed for bankruptcy, and they lost their house back home on the lake," she told Women's Health in 2023. "We couldn't afford life in L.A. We couldn't afford life anywhere."

Sweeney felt responsible for her family's situation, but she was convinced her big break was going to happen. "I knew that, at some point, someone would believe in me enough to put me in something that would matter to people," she told Elle U.K. in 2022. She was getting small roles here and there to help support the family, but it still wasn't enough. So Sweeney picked up some menial jobs — and one of them was particularly surprising. 

Sydney Sweeney took gigs as a babysitter and worked in restaurants cleaning bathrooms, she said in the Women's Health interview. But in 2016, she found a job as a tour guide at Universal Studios. "I love tour guides at Universal. I memorized the entire thing," she told host Sean Evans on Hot Ones in January. It didn't last long, but Sweeney soon landed a part on HBO's "Sharp Objects," a role that propelled her acting career along with "Everything Sucks!" and "The Handmaid's Tale."

Sweeney's stint as a tour guide lasted just five weeks — but it happened nonetheless. The "White Lotus" actor was accused of making it up when Women's Health listed the position alongside some menial jobs, giving the impression Sweeney had made it sound like a summer job. In a TikTok video, a tour guide described the drawn-out hiring process, which she said was incompatible with Sweeney's portrayal. "I find it hard to believe that a teenager has time to do three weeks of training for a job while they are also in high school," she argued.

Suspicion intensified after Sweeney appeared uncomfortable when Evans asked her about the job. But The Hollywood Reporter did some digging and uncovered that Sweeney indeed worked at Universal Studios between June 12 and July 18, 2016. She did tell Evans she was "there for a little bit." It sounds like she just prefers not to make a big deal about the job when it was so short-lived.

While she left her days of cleaning bathrooms and leading tours behind, Sydney Sweeney kept up with her education even as her acting career skyrocketed. Around 2016, right when she was on the brink of having her break, Sweeney enrolled at UCLA to pursue a business degree. Even as she filmed "The Handmaid's Tale," she continued to take classes. "I love school. Like, a lot," she said on The Drew Barrymore Show in 2022.

Sweeney was still taking classes online and finishing up her third year in 2019, when "Euphoria" hit screens. As her work on the hit HBO series grew even more demanding, Sweeney had to take some time off and put college aside. But she still values her business education, even if many of her peers considered her decision to pursue a college degree unwise. "This is a business", she told TMRW in 2021. "Being an actor, you are your own business and you need to be able to run it and think for yourself."

Sweeney has always placed education high on her list of priorities, a value instilled in her by her parents. "Never was I allowed to miss school ... School has always been number one," she told W in 2019. Even though Sweeney had to work throughout high school, she graduated valedictorian. "It taught me how to balance work and homework and life and a social life," Sweeney told The Spokane Review in 2020.