From her earnest start as a community theater actress in Texas to landing big roles on Broadway—she played Annie!—and beyond, it seems that Sadie Sink’s star was always destined to ascend. In 2017, at age 14, she joined the cast of Netflix’s supernatural hit Stranger Things as a skateboarding tomboy named Max. She was quickly embraced by Hollywood and fashion brands alike, and the stans came out in droves.
In December, there will be another performance to applaud as Sink, now 20, flexes her dramatic muscles in A24’s highly anticipated The Whale, directed by Darren Aronofsky and adapted from Samuel D. Hunter’s play of the same name. Sink plays Ellie, a troublesome teenager who is summoned to the cramped apartment of her obese and housebound father, Charlie, (Brendan Fraser) amid his declining health. (Spoiler alert: It turns out that battling emotional family issues is just as grueling as fighting Demogorgons in the Upside Down.)
Sink reflects on her supercharged entry into the pop culture ether, the advice she’s received from some of her famous pals—including Taylor Swift, who recently received a pair of Grammy nominations for her short film, All Too Well, starring Sink—and why she’ll never dye her famously fiery locks.
L’OFFICIEL: You started working as an actor when you were very young. How did you know that acting was what you wanted to do?
SADIE SINK: My brother Mitchell and I did it at home for fun. We became obsessed with watching Tony Award performances on YouTube—or bootlegs of Broadway musicals that we desperately wanted to see.
L’O: Which ones?
and and were favorites too, and those were the shows that we ended up doing. My mom was the one who
