Fame hasn’t changed Sydney Sweeney.
At least that’s how it appears given the group of friends the “Euphoria” star surrounds herself with: people she’s known since childhood.
“I have a really amazing friend group where there are a few who are in this industry, but most of them are not,” the 26-year-old told Cosmopolitan in a recent interview. “You get to step out of what I call ‘the bubble,’ and you see what’s important in life. You see reality, and it grounds and humbles you.”
Sweeney said that she and her friends have lately been spending time at her lake house in Northern Idaho, where she grew up.
“Most of my friends are still my childhood friends, and that’s why most of them aren’t in the industry, because I didn’t grow up in it,” she explained. “It’s very much just going back to my roots.”
Sweeney convinced her parents to move to Los Angeles when she was 13, after she had started booking acting parts in the Pacific Northwest.
Earlier this year, Sweeney told Travel + Leisure, “I go home all the time. What’s so beautiful about the Pacific Northwest is everything that you can do outdoors. . . . There are so many mountains and lakes.”
Sweeney remembered going berry picking there as a child. “If you go a little bit north of Spokane, [Washington], right next to the border, there’s like all these hidden little waterfalls.”
Of course, the Hollywood “it” girl has her share of famous friends, like her “Euphoria” co-star Maude Apatow, Halsey, “White Lotus” co-star Alexandra Daddario and infamously Glen Powell, who was falsely romantically linked to her.
Chemistry-filled press appearances for their 2023 romantic comedy “Anyone But You” fueled rumors that the two actors might have something going on behind the scenes – despite the fact that Sweeney has been engaged to businessman Jonathan Davino since 2022.
Sweeney addressed both her Northwest roots and the romance rumors last spring when she hosted “Saturday Night Live.”
“I’m from a town called Spokane, right on the border of Washington and Idaho. I feel a bond to both states. Like when people ask where are you from? I say: ‘Washington.’ But when people ask ‘Did you go to a Trump-themed party for your mom,’ I say, ‘Idaho?’” she joked.
Mentioning the affair rumors, she said they were “obviously not true. Me and my fiancé produced the movie together, and he was there the entire shoot, and I just want to let everyone knows that he’s the man of my dreams, and we’re still together and stronger than ever.”
She said that Davino had come to “Saturday Night Live” to support her, but when she asked for the camera to cut to him, in a preplanned joke, Powell was in the audience, to the delight of the crowd.
Sweeney admitted in the Cosmo interview that she is a “workaholic” and that taking time off to relax with friends is an effort for her.
“It’s a very different feeling for me,” she said of having time for fun. “I am a workaholic. I love to work and I love juggling a million things at the same time. It was almost like a challenge to myself, to take a step back and allow myself to go into vacation mode. And it’s been hard! My friends would hide my phone while I’d be trying to call my team so we could talk scripts and work!”
The “Euphoria” star was also recently seen enjoying the weather at her new oceanfront mansion in Florida with friends and her fiancé, jet skiing, riding a banana boat and paddle-boarding with her dog.
Going back to the Powell dating rumors – which may have flourished partially because Sweeney’s actual relationship with Davino isn’t particularly public – she explained that she likes to keep her work and private lives separate.
“I think that it’s really important to keep my personal life personal,” she told Cosmo. “I became an actor because I loved playing characters. I loved creating stories and jumping in and learning everything that I could about other people. I never really thought that people would be interested in Sydney. I thought that they’d want to see my character, and so I want to keep it about the work.”