.
“To be honest, I didn’t know who Christy was before I read the script,” she said.
“I remember calling my team right afterwards, and I was like, ‘I don’t care. I have to be this person’.”
Actress Sydney Sweeney arrives for the 77th Emmy Awards.
PATRICK T. FALLON
Becoming Christy Martin involved a big physical transformation for Sweeney.
“You have to train every day. I was drinking protein shakes after protein shakes after protein shakes, having to plug my nose and just chug it. It’s so gross.
“Weight training morning and night, boxing all day. So that’s a physical and mental challenge on its own.
“And then the emotional and mental preparation to play Christie was its own battle.”
Dave Michôd and Sydney Sweeney at the Christy premiere party during the Toronto International Film Festival on September 05, 2025.
Sonia Recchia / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP
The role required multiple scenes of tough boxing bouts. Michôd (writer-director of The King Animal Kingdom
“It was very important to me from the outset that the fighting feels real … as much as I tried to control it,” Michôd said.
“Sydney just wanted to hit people and get hit herself.”
‘A kind of gay boxing drama about domestic violence’
While much of the focus of the recent Christy press tour centred around Sweeney’s transformation into the muscular, female fighter – the first female star in the stable of legendary boxing promoter Don King – the emotional power in this movie lies in the pivot to the unfolding domestic violence Christy endured at the hands of her coach-husband Jim Martin.
The film changes gear as Martin’s insidious grip on his young protege tightens. Over time, he draws Christy into a seedy drug-fuelled existence, threatened by her success and the reappearance of her former girlfriend, Rosie, played by Jess Gabor.
Christy Martin rests during a boxing match in August 2003.
Getty Images North America / Getty Images via AFP
“I was drawn immediately to wanting to understand how those kinds of relationships function,” Michôd said.
“I mean, Christy is a powerful woman, but stayed married to this man 25 years her senior for 20 years. How does that function?”
Co-writer Mirrah Foulks said Christy’s story provided a narrative to portray the bitter dynamics of coercive control.
“What Dave and I saw in Christy’s story was the opportunity to wrap it (domestic violence) in something that was very familiar to audiences, the cinematic canon of underdog sporting movies,” she said.
“It’s a kind of gay boxing drama about domestic violence and coercive control.”
What’s happening in Hollywood?
American actress Sydney Sweeney appeared in a controversial campaign for the clothing brand American Eagle earlier this year.
TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP
After a successful premiere at the Toronto film festival, Christy followed a pattern of star vehicles failing at the box office this northern summer.
Actors Margot Robbie, Colin Farrell, Dwayne Johnson and Austin Butler, amongst others, have all failed to draw in cinema audiences this year.
According to trade magazine Variety the failures present an existential crisis for cinema.
For this viewer, Christy is a film best experienced in the cinema, in company with others: watching Martin’s life reach its darkly realised denouement with Michôd’s direction becoming almost stiflingly intense.
For the filmmakers, waiting for Christy Martin’s response to seeing the film about herself for the first time was the real test. Michôd says they waited in Sydney for a call from LA.
“We were sick with anxiety. The surrender we were asking for was huge. Then Christy and (her partner) Lisa called and said, ‘No notes. We love it.’ We cried’”.
