Today (December 12), Entertainment Weekly named Sadie Sink one of their 2022 Entertainers Of The Year. Furthermore, they got another supreme entertainer in Taylor Swift to pen a note about Sink, who starred in Swift’s All Too Well: The Short Film.
Swift’s message begins, “Sadie Sink is a remarkable presence on screen, on stage, and on set. While watching the monitors during the filming of the short film we made together, I often found myself transfixed by the effortlessness and complexity of her performance. Scratch that, because it didn’t feel like a performance at all. Her grief, her hope, her loss — it all felt real.”
After praising Sink’s acting abilities in Stranger Things, The Whale, and All Too Well, Swift concluded, “She is a force to watch and a pleasure to know. I’ll continue to feel just as lucky to watch from afar as she lights up the screen, tells new stories, and shows us new sides of herself: multifaceted and brilliant, dark and unhinged, twinkly and full of promise. This artist contains multitudes, and we get to look on as she courageously unveils them. Everyone say, ‘Thank you, Sadie.'”
Read Swift’s fill message here or below.
“Sadie Sink is a remarkable presence on screen, on stage, and on set. While watching the monitors during the filming of the short film we made together, I often found myself transfixed by the effortlessness and complexity of her performance. Scratch that, because it didn’t feel like a performance at all. Her grief, her hope, her loss — it all felt real.
I often tell people that Sadie’s face is so transparent, you can even see the thoughts she almost has. After over a decade of work, as the internet would say, this year ‘Sadie Sink’s rent was due.’ She helped bring ‘Running Up That Hill’ by Kate Bush back into the cultural spotlight with a harrowing performance as Max Mayfield on Stranger Things season 4. Max’s conflicted sorrow, regret, and resentment was potent and piercing in her portrayal, a slow burn that simmered with intensity. Even when despondent, Max’s fury was palpable from beneath layers of hurt. It was an evolutionary turn for the character, helmed gracefully and tastefully by an artist who knows how to extensively prepare and fully commit.
She continued to show audiences this level of versatility and emotional dexterity, next rising to the challenge of playing Brendan Fraser’s complex and defiant estranged daughter Ellie in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. Ellie is a character for whom years of rejection and confusion has calcified into rage, and Sadie threaded the needle with the exact attention to detail such tumult calls for. Darren said of working with her, ‘Sadie is as precise as a surgeon’s scalpel. She’s a firecracker of emotion and a complete professional.’
I remember being lucky enough to witness those exact emotional fireworks sparking throughout our shoot, when she took on the role of a lovestruck, then lovelorn young woman I named ‘Her’ in All Too Well: The Short Film. When she went head-to-head with Dylan O’Brien in an explosive argument scene, I decided to shoot the rehearsal on a whim. Good thing, because Sadie lit up that kitchen fight with ad-libbed lines, improvised twists and turns, and all with riveting nuance. The rehearsal is what ended up in the film, a one-shot battle that I didn’t have the nerve to cut down in the edit. Because EVERYTHING was captivating.
She is a force to watch and a pleasure to know. I’ll continue to feel just as lucky to watch from afar as she lights up the screen, tells new stories, and shows us new sides of herself: multifaceted and brilliant, dark and unhinged, twinkly and full of promise. This artist contains multitudes, and we get to look on as she courageously unveils them. Everyone say, ‘Thank you, Sadie.'”
