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Aussie actress Sarah Snook speaks up about body shaming

Sarah opens up on how industry gatekeepers body-shamed her as a young actress.
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Succession star and beloved Australian actress Sarah Snook, has recently spoken out about how she was body-shamed and humiliated by industry gatekeepers in the early years of her career. 

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Sarah has worked incredibly hard to get where she is today…

Her role as Shivy Roy in Succession has won her two Golden Globe Awards, two Critics Choice Awards, and nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards.

However, the 36-year-old award-winning actress has said she was subject to the cruel beauty expectations in the industry throughout her 20s. 

WATCH NOW: Succession’s Sarah Snook reveals she proposed to her husband. Article continues after video.

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In an interview with the UK’s Sunday Times, Sarah revealed that one casting director had declared her a “nobody” at the beginning of her career and said they would have to “change all of you” after being cast for a role in a film. 

Sarah said the casting director told her, “We don’t really want you because you’re a nobody, but the director and the writer think you’re good for the role.”

“So what we’ll do is change all of you so that you’re marketable: We’ll whiten your teeth, darken your hair, we’ll give you a personal trainer so you can lose weight and look the part.”

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Sarah won a Critics Choice Award in January 2024 for her role in Succession. (Credit: Getty)
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Sarah said she felt as though she was required to cooperate with what the casting director was saying. She revealed that she felt as though, “in order for me to be successful, I have to be all the things that aren’t me”.

Sarah also shared that a film producer had criticised her in front of many cast and crew members because she was eating “the tiniest bit of chocolate cake.” She said that a costume designer stepped in an told Sarah to continue enjoying the cake. 

“And all the while I am dying inside,” Snook said.

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Sarah won a Golden Globe Award in January 2024 for her role in Succession. (Credit: Getty)
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Early in her career, in 2010, Sarah acted as a prisoner of war in a TV Movie called Sisters of War. Sarah recalled feeling insulted after she was told she “got hot” following her weight loss.

Sarah said that although she knew this was intended as a compliment, what she heard was: “Well, I wasn’t hot before. So I must have been disgusting. Therefore I must maintain this shape at all costs, and I’m only worthwhile as an object in the eyes of another person by being a shape that is appreciable to them.”

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Sarah and her husband Dave Lawson got married in 2021. They welcomed their first child together in 2023. (Credit: Getty)

Sarah welcomed her daughter in May 2023 and she is already wary of the type of language she experiences in her developing years.

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“I noticed it with my daughter. She’s a very cute baby and people already go, ‘Oh, what a beautiful girl!’ And there’s a sense of protection that kicks in for me, and goes, ‘Whoa, she’s more than that. Or she will be.’ She is genuinely very cute — and I don’t think that’s just a biased mother saying that. But I am wary of that being language that she experienced growing up,” Sarah said.

Sarah continued to share with Sunday Times that when she was young,“no one thought I was attractive. Like, so unattractive in my teenage years, and no boyfriend.”

“And how I interpreted the world was: no one liked me,” she said.

“But what was great about thinking that I was completely abhorrently unattractive was that it was quite useful. I tried to create good character instead.”

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RELATED: Who is Sarah Snook’s husband Dave Lawson?

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