HBO's Euphoria [1] is the teen drama everyone's buzzing about [2], but unlike some "prestige" television, it's not about the cast. In fact, the show's cast [3] is a mix of fresh and familiar faces, like Sydney Sweeney as Cassie. She's a teenage girl trying to take control of her own life and choices, and she might look somewhat familiar to you — here's why.
Sweeney has a pretty lengthy résumé, considering she's only 21 years old. Her earliest credit came back in 2009, when she had a guest spot at the age of 12 on the NBC sci-fi drama Heroes, in a role so small it was only credited as "Little Girl." For most of her teens, Sweeney spent her career steadily building a résumé out of guest spots on popular TV shows and short films. Among some of her credits during this era are 90210, Grey's Anatomy [4], The Middle, and Pretty Little Liars [5].
Sweeney got her first semi-major role with a supporting role on In the Vault, a twisty webseries from 2017 that follows the mysterious aftermath of a college student's sudden death. Her character, Haley Caren, appears in seven of the show's 16 episodes. Although the show didn't make much of a splash and was only available on the streaming platform Go90, her next project was on a larger scale.
In 2018, Sweeney landed on Everything Sucks!, a Netflix teen sitcom about the rivalry between a high school drama club and the A/V club. As drama student Emaline, Sweeney costarred in all 10 episodes as a series regular. Sweeney next made the leap to a different streaming platform and much heavier material, joining Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale [7]. During the drama's second season, Sweeney played Eden, a tragic young bride.
Euphoria [8] isn't Sweeney's first role on HBO. That actually would be her time on Sharp Objects in 2018, where she played Alice [9], a character shrouded in mystery at first because her presence is a bit of a spoiler. As it turns out, Alice is Camille's (Amy Adams [10]) roommate at a mental health facility, who becomes somewhat of a surrogate sister for Camille during their time there, despite (or because of) their age gap. Like with her role on The Handmaid's Tale, Sweeney's character serves as a devastating reminder of the how things can go wrong so easily. It remains to be seen if her Euphoria character will have a similarly emotional arc, but given the show's intensity [11] only one episode in, we're guessing Sweeney is about to take us on quite the bumpy ride.