Sydney Sweeney recalls childhood wakeboarding accident

She shares details of incident that left her with a permanent scar

Sydney Sweeney has spoken about a childhood wakeboarding accident that resulted in a facial injury and a scar she still carries today.

The actor discussed the incident during a recent interview with W Magazine, where she reflected on how the experience left a lasting physical mark.

According to Sweeney, the accident occurred when she was 10 years old during a wakeboarding outing. While attempting a stunt on the water, the manoeuvre went wrong.

"I jumped the wake and I tried to do a 360," she said, explaining how the tip of the board unexpectedly came up and struck her face.

The impact caused a deep cut near her eye that required approximately 17 stitches. The scar remains visible years later.

The wakeboarding injury was one of several physical incidents Sweeney referenced in the interview. She also recalled tearing her MCL while dirt-bike riding, an injury that left another scar.

In addition, she described an experience while filming the film Eden in Australia, where an unidentified insect bit her. "It just turned into this crazy crater; then it scarred," she said, noting that the bite developed into a keloid scar.

Sweeney's comments were made in the context of discussing her comfort with physical challenges, which she said began long before her acting career. In recent years, she has taken on roles that involve demanding preparation and physical endurance.

Most recently, she portrayed boxer Christy Martin in the biopic Christy, undergoing a significant physical transformation and performing her own stunts.

As a child actress, Sweeney debuted on television in 2009 with a bit part in an episode of the series Heroes. Her first film role was in the 2010 horror comedy ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction. She played supporting roles in television shows such as 90210, Criminal Minds, Grey's Anatomy and Pretty Little Liars. In 2018, she starred as Emaline Addario in the Netflix series Everything Sucks!, which revolved around two groups of high school students in Oregon in 1996. She appeared in the HBO miniseries Sharp Objects, recurring as Alice, a roommate whom Amy Adams's character meets at a psychiatric facility. Her character originally had a smaller role, but the director kept bringing her in for more scenes.

For the role, Sweeney studied stories of girls who experience mental illness and self-harming, and visited hospitals with patients who self-harmed. She filmed Everything Sucks! and Sharp Objects concurrently, the former during the week and latter on weekends. Sweeney had a role in the 2018 film Under the Silver Lake. She had a recurring role in the second season of the dystopian drama series The Handmaid's Tale as Eden Spencer, a pious and obedient girl from the totalitarian and theocratic Republic of Gilead.