When Sadie Sink was 11, she began having panic attacks. After three years of acting professionally, she played the lead role in a Broadway revival of “Annie,” which she loved. “And then everything changed,” she says. “Singing became the worst thing ever. I was terrified of it.”
As it turns out, the relentless pressure of a Broadway show left Sink convinced that a single wrong note or botched line – anything less than absolute perfection – ruined the show. “I never wanted to sing again.”
So she gave up.
Two years later, Sink was back on Broadway, in Peter Morgan’s drama “The Audience” as the young Queen Elizabeth II alongside Helen Mirren. The role did not require singing, but on the first night before the performance, Sink felt the old panic rising within her. She did not want to go on stage.
“But then I said to myself, ‘Sadie, if you don’t do this, what else do you have left?’ Fear had already taken away my singing. If acting was gone, then everything was gone.”
That night, for the first time, she overcame her panic.
Sink, now 22, has spent her career playing characters who often have to confront the source of their fear, literally – characters like the headstrong Max in Stranger Things, the antisocial Ellie in The Whale, or the wide-eyed young heroine in Taylor Swift’s All Too Well: The Short Film. Her ability to effortlessly evoke the darker and more difficult emotional complexities of adolescence is uncanny.
“She’s always seemed very raw and real and shows her vulnerability in a different way than most actors,” says Matt Duffer, who co-created “Stranger Things” with his brother Ross and served as executive producer. “There are actors who hit a few notes really, really well, but they kind of only hit those notes. Sadie is increasingly able to hit those very subtle, nuanced notes. That’s pretty rare.”
Sink joined Stranger Things in season 2 at age 14, but her character didn’t really rise to fame until season 4, after the show’s main villain targets Max for a gruesome death that the rest of the cast spends the entire season trying to prevent. They succeed, but only just: Max is left blind and in a coma. It’s a stunning, heartbreaking character development that captivated audiences worldwide, so much so that Kate Bush’s ’80s hit “Running Up That Hill,” which Max plays on repeat before she is cut down, became the song of the summer of 2022.
Matthew Sprout for Variety
In a sunny cafe near her Atlanta home, where she’s filming the final season of “Stranger Things,” Sink says she didn’t think audiences would love Max so much. “I really didn’t think people would care so much about her journey,” she says with a good-natured shrug. Sink doesn’t have social media on her phone, so one of her older brothers had to show her how much Max dominated his TikTok feed to convince her that people actually cared about her. “Still, I kind of thought, ‘That’s cool,'” she says.
She still hasn’t fully grasped how big Max’s influence was. “I think I’m definitely numb to a lot of things now, which is good. I think it gives you stability.” In contrast to the tempestuous roles she often plays, Sink’s default expression is a friendly smile. She can be charming and engaging, and in conversation she listens with a confident calm. Unlike many young actresses, she shows no need to be liked.
It wasn’t always like this. As a child actress, she was used to adults treating her “like a puppet,” telling her in great detail how to move her face and body. “When you’re an adult, however, it becomes more of a discussion,” she says.
That transition began in earnest for Sink when she joined the cast of “The Whale,” the 2022 indie film that earned Brendan Fraser an Oscar for his portrayal of a 600-pound gay man desperately trying to reconnect with his estranged daughter. Sink, then 18, was drawn to the challenge of evoking the vengeful rage her character feels toward her father while maintaining a level of compassion for her character. But at first, Sink fell back into trying to please people, afraid of not fulfilling the vision of the film’s director, Darren Aronofsky.
Instead, Aronofsky hired Sink as an equal, encouraging her to focus on what she could bring to the role rather than figuring out how to please him. “It was abundantly clear to me that she was an artist and that she cared about the work,” says Aronofsky. “I have to credit a lot of that to Sadie. I don’t remember having to explain that much to her. I think she really put it on paper.”
Sink says the experience of making The Whale “kind of changed everything for me.” But how that change manifested in her life is something she’s only now realizing. When asked where she gets the raw anger that drives so many of her characters, her eyes dart back and forth as she answers, as if she’s figuring it out for herself in real time.
“I had put up this wall before,” she says, twisting her braided plaits around her fingers. “In everyday life, I suppress most emotions. Strangely, when I’m acting, my anger or sadness can just explode. That’s the moment.”
Just months after filming “The Whale,” Sink had the chance to put her newfound sense of creative freedom to the test when Taylor Swift cast her in “All Too Well,” playing her in the role of 20-year-old Swift, who was then dating Jake Gyllenhaal.
“At that point, I had never been in love,” says Sink. “I had never experienced a breakup that intense. This was all new territory for me. I just had to rely on my years of research as a Swiftie.”
And yet, like so many Swift fans, Sink has found a deep connection with herself. For the scene, which is set to Swift’s most famous lyric from the song “And you call me up again just to break me like a promise,” Sink lies curled up on her bed, sobbing as her phone lights up next to her.
Matthew Sprout for Variety
As an actress, she had always focused on her character’s circumstances rather than her own experiences to find the emotion in the scene. “But as time went on, things from my personal life came up that fueled it even more,” she says. “Then I thought, ‘Wow. Maybe I should work on Sadie in those areas.'”
She doesn’t elaborate, but says she dropped “All Too Well” from her “relaxation song” rotation while making “Stranger Things.” “It has this incredibly nostalgic feeling for me now that I physically feel in my body,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. “It’s too intense.”
Filming Season 5 of Stranger Things has been an exercise in nostalgia all its own. The cast has been living in the same Atlanta neighborhood so they can better spend time together in their free time and enjoy their final months together. What Sink is doing during these months is a big topic for fans of the show. When asked if the fact that Sink is still filming is proof that Max has come out of his coma, Sink offers a single, cryptic clue. “They love to make me run,” she says. Whether that means in real life, the shadow world, or the void is left to the imagination for now. “That’s all I’m going to say,” she says.
The Duffer brothers are similarly cautious when asked about Sink’s participation in Season 5. “She will play a role in the season,” says Matt Duffer.
“But we don’t want to reveal how this is possible,” adds Ross Duffer.
“Right, because she’s in a coma,” says Matt. But while he praises Sink’s acting chops, Matt also gives his own tantalizing hint of what’s to come. “I think she’s just become more confident as an actress and in her choices,” he says. “We shot a scene with her the other day that was just absolutely heartbreaking. I don’t know how she hits those notes.”
Sink compares growing up on Stranger Things to “the best education in the world,” but she also fondly compares the show to “a machine.” The lavish production and large cast mean Sink has a lot of free time, punctuated by periods on set that can be refreshingly intense. “I’ve been working all last week and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I forgot how hard this show is,'” she says, laughing. “Here, you’re a team player. It’s not about me. It’s not about anyone else. It’s about the show and what’s best for it.”
As fulfilling as the role of Max was for Sink, she now knows enough about herself to know she’s not looking to join another Hollywood machine anytime soon. “I don’t want to play a superhero or a princess,” she says. “I just want to make sure that everything I do is different from the last one. I’m still young and I’m still learning.”
She’s even willing to overcome her deep fear of singing in front of anyone other than her closest friends and family. In early 2023, she signed on to play the title role in Searchlight’s 2025 feature film “O’Dessa,” an ambitious indie film from writer-director Geremy Jasper (“Patti Cake$”) about a farm girl who leaves home and moves to a post-apocalyptic metropolis to find a family heirloom. Most importantly for Sink, it’s also a rock opera – meaning she’d have to sing professionally nearly every day for the first time since she was 11.
“There was this moment where I was just like, ‘Oh my God. I can’t believe I said yes to this. Shit. What am I doing?!'” she says, her eyes getting so wide that you can clearly see she’s still shocked that she did it.
In fact, singing in front of strangers was unbearable at first. “I was singing a song and no one else really knew that I was freaking out inside, but in my head I was thinking, ‘Oh, that’s not my voice. I can’t sing that song like that,'” she says.
But eventually that inner monologue began to fade. “Not always,” Sink says quickly. “Some days were harder than others. But sometimes it was like, ‘I feel completely fearless right now and I’m singing in front of a lot of people!'”
The trick? “She “I sang, not me,” she says of her role. As long as she played a role, she didn’t have to be perfect.”TheI’m comfortable with that. But Sadie won’t be singing any time soon.”
Styling by Alex Badia; Sr. Market Editor, Men: Luis Campuzano; Senior Market Editor, Accessories: Thomas Waller; Fashion Market Editor: Emily Mercer; Fashion Assistants: Ari Stark and Kimberly Infante; Set Design: Viki Rutsch/Exposure NY; Makeup: Mary Wiles/Walter Schupfer; Hair: Tommy Buckett/Tracey Mattingly
