It’s Time To Meet the Real Sydney Sweeney

“I hope you like cookies and ice cream,” Sydney Sweeney says as we cozy into a red leather booth at BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Burbank. The chain restaurant an unlikely locale to find one of Hollywood’s brightest stars—but the 26-year old actor actually selected this spot for us herself because of one specific dessert menu item. (The three people who come up to us and breathlessly ask “are you Sydney Sweeney?” certainly can’t believe she’s there, either.) 

“I started coming here with my family when I was really young,” the actor fills me in on her choice of nostalgic meeting spots. “I am a huge cookie and ice cream fan and they make this thing called a pizookie that I love.”

After we order two chocolate chip pizookies, topped with vanilla ice cream, Sweeney touches on her childhood in northwestern Idaho, calling herself a herself a “tomboy” who wasn’t really tapped into the beauty world. “The women in my family didn’t really wear makeup,” she says. “I grew up with putting sunscreen on your face and body, but that was about it. It wasn’t until I came to L.A. that I really learned about skincare and makeup.” 

If she’s wearing makeup today, I wouldn’t know it. After being on set all day with skincare brand Laneige, she has on a cream cable knit sweater, hair casually pulled back into a ponytail and skin glowing. Sweeney been the US ambassador for the brand since 2022, and today she’s been promoted to the global level. “It’s the most clean face version of me,” she says of the shoot, adding that she loves that the brand sees her that way—exactly how she is. 

As we talk, our portmanteau of “pizza” and “cookie” arrive warm from the oven. Following a cheers-ing of the cookie skillets, it’s time for a taste test. Sweeney watches me for feedback and I feel like Padma Lakshmi, reviewing something for Top Chef—but of course, it’s delicious. Phew. 

Now years into her acting career, Sweeney feels “empowered through my femininity.” But that doesn’t mean the tomboy of her youth has disappeared—see the candy apple red 1969 Bronco she recently restored by hand. “It’s fun to be both. That’s what’s so cool about just being human, we can be anything that we want to be.”