Sadie Sink

Sadie Elizabeth Sink (born April 16, 2002) is an American actress.

Sadie Elizabeth Sink was born in Brenham, Texas, on April 16, 2002.

Her mother is a math teacher, and her father is a football coach.

She has three older brothers and a younger sister.

While her family was sports-oriented, she and her brother Mitchell were interested in performing arts, especially musical theater.

They would often recreate scenes from High School Musical (2006); and watch Broadway plays and Tony Award performances.

Sink said they were "so annoying and loud and constantly demanding attention" while growing up.

When Sink was seven, her mother put her and Mitchell in acting classes in Houston.

Sink began acting in community theater with a production of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever in Brenham at age seven.

When she was eight years old, she had a leading role in a local production of The Secret Garden, which involved "more learning lines and real practice".

Her experience encouraged her to pursue a professional acting career.

Sink was regularly performing in plays at Theater Under the Stars by the age of nine; she appeared in musical productions of White Christmas (2011) and portrayed the title role in Annie (2012).

She began acting at age seven in local theater productions, and played the title role in Annie (2012–14) and young Elizabeth II in The Audience (2015) on Broadway.

In 2012, Sink's family supported her and Mitchell's careers by moving to New Jersey.

At age 10, Sink was cast in the 2012 Broadway revival of Annie.

She appeared in the show for 18 months, performing eight times a week.

From October 2012 to July 2013, she was a standby for the characters of Annie, Tessie, Duffy, July, and Pepper.

Following the departure of Lilla Crawford at the end of July, Sink and Taylor Richardson began alternating between the roles of Annie and Duffy.

On their casting as Annie, director James Lapine said: "As we were preparing to cast the next Annie, I realized we had two wonderful candidates already in the orphanage. Both Taylor and Sadie are such unique young actresses, that I decided to let them share the role".

During her Annie Broadway run, Sink made her television debut in 2013 in a guest role on the spy drama series The Americans.

The part prompted her to seek a career in film acting.

Sink continued appearing in the production until its final performance in January 2014.

She said she gained discipline from performing in Annie.

She subsequently decided to pursue her acting career permanently, having loved "every second" of the show.

She also made an appearance in a 2014 episode of the police procedural show Blue Bloods.

Sink began homeschooling while in second grade and returned to regular school after performing in The Audience (2015).

Sink starred as Suzanne Ballard in the NBC action thriller series American Odyssey (2015), which was canceled after one season.

Sink appeared in the 2015 Broadway production of The Audience as young Queen Elizabeth II, who is portrayed by Helen Mirren as an adult.

Sink's relationship with acting "really shifted" after observing Mirren's approach towards it.

She said working with "some of the greatest minds in the industry" showed her the true meaning of acting.

Reviews in USA Today and The New York Times deemed Sink's performance as Elizabeth "touching" and "very good".

She made her film debut in the biographical sports drama Chuck (2016).

Sink made her film debut in the biographical sports drama Chuck (2016).

In September 2016, Sink auditioned to play Maxine "Max" Mayfield in the second season of Netflix's science fiction drama series Stranger Things.

The casting directors deemed the 14-year-old Sink too old for the role, but she "begged and pleaded" for more material to perform for them.

She attended four callbacks, including a chemistry read with Gaten Matarazzo and Caleb McLaughlin.

During the audition process, Sink lied about having rollerblading experience.

Sink had her breakthrough portraying Max Mayfield in the Netflix science fiction series Stranger Things (2017–present) and received critical acclaim for her performance in its fourth season.

In 2021, she appeared in the horror film trilogy Fear Street and played the lead role in Taylor Swift's short film All Too Well.

Sink has since starred in Darren Aronofsky's psychological drama The Whale (2022), for which she received a Critics' Choice Movie Award nomination.