There’s a specific kind of actor who makes the work look effortless. Not effortless in the sense of easy — effortless in the sense that you stop watching them act and start watching them be. Sadie Sink is one of those actors.

Most people found her through Stranger Things, which is completely understandable because Stranger Things was one of the defining shows of the streaming era and Max Mayfield was one of its best characters. But if that’s all you know about Sadie Sink, you’ve missed a genuinely remarkable career that started on Broadway when she was ten years old and is currently moving in about five directions at once, all of them impressive.

Sadie Elizabeth Sink was born on April 16, 2002, in Brenham, Texas. She has three older brothers and a younger sister, Jacey, who has appeared in some of the same projects as her. She caught the theatre bug at an early age, recreating scenes from her favourite plays and musicals at home with her brother Mitchell. The siblings were subsequently enrolled in acting classes and started performing in community theatre. The family eventually relocated to New Jersey to give her room to grow in her career.

This is the complete guide to everything she’s been in — from the early stage work through the TV guest spots, the breakthrough, the prestige films, and what’s coming next.

Broadway: Where It All Started

Before the cameras, there was the stage. And not community theatre forever — Sink made it to Broadway before she was eleven.

She began her career in theater, playing the title role in the musical Annie from 2012 to 2014 and the young Elizabeth II in the historical play The Audience on Broadway in 2015.

The Annie run is worth understanding in detail because it wasn’t a brief cameo appearance. She appeared in the show for 18 months, performing eight times a week. Initially she was a standby for multiple roles, but when the lead actress departed, Sink and another young actress began alternating in the title role. The director at the time said both girls were such unique young actresses that he decided to let them share it.

Performing a lead role in a Broadway musical eight times a week at ten and eleven years old requires a level of focus and discipline that most adults couldn’t sustain. It tells you a lot about who Sink was as a performer before anyone outside of New York theatre circles knew her name.

After Annie, she returned to Broadway in 2015 for The Audience, playing a young Queen Elizabeth II opposite Helen Mirren’s older version of the same character. A reviewer noted that Sink played young Elizabeth with grace and skill. Playing a real historical figure, opposite one of the greatest living British actresses, in a West End transfer production — all before she turned thirteen.

Early Television Work (2013–2016)

While she was doing theatre, Sink also began picking up television credits. None of these roles were large, but the list of shows she appeared on is genuinely impressive for a young actor still in her early teens.

She crossed over into television, appearing on The Americans (FX), Blue Bloods (CBS), and American Odyssey (NBC), before returning to the stage in The Audience. She also guested on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix.

The Americans credit is the one worth pausing on. That show, which followed KGB spies posing as Americans during the Cold War, was one of the most critically acclaimed dramas on television at the time. Getting even a guest role on a show of that calibre as a young teenager says something about how she was being perceived in the industry.

In 2016, she made her film debut in the biographical sports drama Chuck, alongside Liev Schreiber. It was a small role, but it was a proper film credit, and it came before Stranger Things changed everything.

Stranger Things (2017–2025): The Breakthrough

In 2017, Sadie Sink joined the cast of Stranger Things Season 2 as Maxine “Max” Mayfield — a new girl in Hawkins who arrives on a skateboard, beats all the boys’ arcade high scores, and is emphatically not interested in being anyone’s token new friend.

Max was a genuinely tricky character to introduce into an ensemble that viewers were already deeply attached to. She was prickly and guarded in a way that could easily have read as unlikeable. Instead, what Sink did with the character was make her armour feel completely logical — you could see from the beginning that the walls were there for a reason, and that made you want to know the reason.

Season 2 was the introduction. Season 3 developed Max into one of the show’s warmest friendships, particularly with Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven. And then Season 4 happened.

Stranger Things Season 4 is where Sadie Sink stopped being great in a great ensemble and started being the reason people wouldn’t stop talking about a specific episode. The Kate Bush sequence — Max running through Hawkins while Running Up That Hill plays, using the song as a lifeline against Vecna’s grasp — is one of the most purely cinematic things network or streaming television has produced in years. It requires no context to be emotionally affecting. It’s just an actor and a piece of music and a camera, and it works completely.

She received critical praise for her performance throughout the show’s run, and the series concluded its fifth and final season in 2025. The finale divided audiences in the way that all major finales do, but nobody disputed what Sink had contributed to the show across eight years.

Max Mayfield started as the new girl nobody trusted and ended as one of Hawkins’ irreplaceable hearts. That arc belongs almost entirely to what Sink brought to it.

The Glass Castle (2017)

In the same year as her Stranger Things debut, Sink appeared in The Glass Castle, a biographical family drama based on Jeannette Walls’ bestselling memoir. She had a supporting role alongside Brie Larson and Woody Harrelson in this domestic drama.

Harrelson plays the charismatic, alcoholic, impossibly complicated Rex Walls — a father who genuinely believes he is preparing his children for an extraordinary life while actually putting them through something closer to neglect. Larson plays the adult Jeannette. Sink plays a younger version of the same character, which means she had to find a way to play the childhood of a real person whose adult version is being portrayed by one of the best actresses of her generation.

The film received mixed reviews overall, but Sink’s performance was consistently noted as one of its stronger elements.

Fear Street Trilogy (2021)

In 2021, Netflix released all three parts of the Fear Street trilogy — horror films based on R.L. Stine’s book series, directed by Leigh Janiak and set across three different time periods. Sink appeared in two of them.

Fear Street Part 2: 1978 is where she features most prominently, playing Ziggy Berman, a teenager at Camp Nightwing during a violent supernatural summer. This is straight-up genre horror — a slasher setting, genuine scares, a lot of running and screaming and surviving — and Sink commits to it fully. Ziggy is scrappy and resourceful and refuses to be a victim, which is basically the template for every good slasher protagonist.

Fear Street Part 3: 1666 brings her back in a smaller capacity as the story moves to its colonial-era conclusion.

The Fear Street trilogy as a whole was a genuine Netflix hit — fun, scary, smart about its own genre in the way that good horror often is — and Sink’s presence in Part 2 was a significant reason it worked as well as it did. If you’ve only watched the first one and stopped, the second film is the best of the three.

All Too Well: The Short Film (2021)

This one is a little different from everything else on the list, but it absolutely belongs here.

In November 2021, Taylor Swift released the ten-minute version of All Too Well alongside a short film she wrote and directed herself. The film tells the story of a man and a young woman who fall in love but slowly drift apart in time, based on the song. Sink stars opposite Dylan O’Brien.

What Sink does in roughly thirteen minutes of screen time is genuinely impressive. The film asks her to carry the emotional weight of an entire relationship’s arc — beginning, middle, and the kind of ending that doesn’t fully close — without the benefit of exposition or conventional narrative structure. She does it almost entirely through expression and body language and the specific way someone carries themselves when they’re happy, and then when they’re pretending to be happy, and then when they’ve stopped pretending.

The short film went viral immediately upon release, partly because of the song and the cultural moment around it, and partly because people kept sharing the performances. It’s worth watching even if you’re not a Taylor Swift fan. It holds up as a piece of short filmmaking on its own terms.

The Whale (2022)

This is the performance that announced, definitively, that Sadie Sink was not just a television actress with a breakout role. This is the one that made industry people pay a different kind of attention.

The Whale is Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of Samuel D. Hunter’s stage play, and it stars Brendan Fraser as Charlie — a reclusive, severely obese English teacher who is slowly dying and trying to reconnect with his estranged teenage daughter. Sink plays Ellie, that daughter.

Ellie is furious. She has been abandoned by her father, she has spent years building walls around that wound, and she is not remotely interested in a reconciliation that she suspects might be more about his guilt than her wellbeing. She is cruel in the specific way that teenagers can be cruel when they’ve been genuinely hurt — not cartoonishly mean, but with an accuracy that’s more devastating.

Sink received a nomination for the Critics’ Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer for this performance. Fraser won the Academy Award for Best Actor. The film itself divided critics, but Sink’s work in it was almost universally praised.

Playing a character who is fundamentally unsympathetic while making the audience understand and eventually feel for her is one of the harder things an actor can do. Sink does it in a film that lives or dies on whether that character works. It works.

Dear Zoe (2022)

Dear Zoe came out the same year as The Whale and received considerably less attention, which is a shame because it’s a genuinely moving film. Sink plays Tess, a teenager dealing with the death of her younger half-sister and trying to navigate grief, family fracture, and an unlikely connection with a boy from a different part of town.

The film is based on Philip Beard’s novel and directed by Gren Wells. It’s quieter and more modest in its ambitions than The Whale — no prestige awards campaign, no auteur director — but Sink’s performance is anchored and real in a way that rewards the patience the film asks of you.

It’s available to stream and worth an evening.

A Sacrifice (2024)

A Sacrifice is a thriller directed by Jordan Scott — daughter of Ridley Scott — in which an American social psychologist investigates a local cult connected to a disturbing event while his daughter becomes embroiled with a mysterious local boy. Sink plays the daughter, opposite Eric Bana.

The film premiered at festivals and received a modest theatrical release. It’s the kind of mid-budget adult thriller that used to be a Hollywood staple and is now increasingly rare, which makes it worth seeking out for that reason alone.

O’Dessa (2025)

O’Dessa is a rock opera film — yes, really — that premiered at Sundance 2025 and quickly generated some of the most interesting word-of-mouth of the festival. Sink led the film in what is by some distance the most musically demanding thing she has taken on since her Broadway days.

A rock opera set in a post-apocalyptic American landscape, drawing on the myth of Odysseus, it’s precisely the kind of strange, ambitious, difficult-to-market film that tends to either disappear entirely or develop a passionate cult following over time. Based on the Sundance reaction, it’s heading toward the latter.

If you have any tolerance for ambitious musical filmmaking that doesn’t care particularly about being accessible, track this one down.

John Proctor Is the Villain — Broadway (2025)

Sink returned to Broadway in 2025, starring in the comedy play John Proctor Is the Villain. Opening in April 2025, the play and her performance were met with critical acclaim.

The play, written by Kimberly Belflower, is set in a Georgia high school during the #MeToo era, where an 11th grade English class studying The Crucible by Arthur Miller faces an incident that forces the students to re-examine the play, their community, and their own power. Sink played Shelby Holcomb, who has a similar role to Abigail Williams in the original play.

A reviewer from Variety wrote that Sink gives a spellbinding performance as a girl who is deeply pained but shielded with thick armour: smart but underestimated, and ready to harness her rage. The role earned her a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play.

A Tony nomination at 22, for a Broadway production of genuine cultural significance. Not bad.

A film adaptation was announced in July 2025, with Sink serving as executive producer. Tina Fey and Marc Platt are producing, and playwright Kimberly Belflower is adapting her own script for the screen. No release date has been set yet, but this is one to watch.

Romeo & Juliet — West End (2026)

Sink made her West End debut in 2026 in Robert Icke’s production of Romeo & Juliet at the Harold Pinter Theatre in London, playing Juliet opposite Noah Jupe as Romeo.

Sink described the experience in her own words before opening: “I was a Broadway kid, so I’ve always dreamed about doing a show in the West End. To get to do that in one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays under Rob’s direction with Noah will be such an exciting challenge. London theatre has this incredible energy, and I can’t wait to be a part of it.”

When the production opened, a video from the curtain call spread rapidly across social media, and fans were losing their minds over the pair’s chemistry. The production was directed by Robert Icke, a two-time Olivier Award winner known for emotionally charged, intimate reinterpretations of classical material — his staging strips the play down to its most essential human core. Reviews were strong across the board.

The production ran at the Harold Pinter Theatre for 12 weeks.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)

This is the big one. The one that takes Sadie Sink’s career into a completely different stratosphere.

Sink has been cast in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Spider-Man: Brand New Day, with plans to reprise the role in Avengers: Secret Wars in 2027. The film stars Tom Holland returning as Peter Parker and opens in US theatres on July 31, 2026.

The movie picks up with Peter rebuilding his life now that the world does not remember who he is, juggling college and a job while a new threat destabilises New York.

Here’s the thing: Sink’s exact character in the film has not been officially confirmed, and the speculation has not been simmering down. Fan theories have been running wild since the trailer dropped in March 2026 — the trailer notably featured Tom Holland and Zendaya prominently but was coy about Sink’s role. That level of deliberate mystery around a confirmed cast member usually means the character reveal is something Marvel wants to land as a surprise.

Tom Holland and Zendaya have been publicly supportive of Sink, attending her Romeo & Juliet production during its London run. The dynamic between the three of them — two established MCU leads turning up at the West End debut of their new co-star — is the kind of thing that builds genuine goodwill before a film even opens.

Whatever her role turns out to be, this is the project that puts Sadie Sink in front of the largest audience of her career. And given what she’s done every single time she’s been put in front of a large audience, that should excite people considerably.

Avengers: Secret Wars (2027)

After closing Romeo & Juliet, Sink is reportedly set to reprise her Spider-Man: Brand New Day role in Avengers: Secret Wars, which she will begin filming later this year. The film is scheduled for December 17, 2027.

Beyond that, details are firmly under wraps. The scale of Secret Wars — which is expected to be a massive crossover event — suggests that Sink’s role, whatever it turns out to be, will be a significant one. You don’t lock an actor into two films before the first one has even released if you’re planning a cameo.

The Bigger Picture: What Makes Sadie Sink Different

Looking at the full filmography, a few things stand out.

She has never chased the obvious path. After Stranger Things made her famous, she could have taken the easy route — blockbusters, franchise films, high-profile studio projects. Instead she went to Darren Aronofsky’s chamber drama. She did a rock opera at Sundance. She went back to Broadway. She did Shakespeare in London. The Spider-Man film is the first conventional franchise project she’s taken, and she’s doing it nine years into a career that has already included a Tony nomination and a Critics’ Choice nomination and some of the most interesting film choices of anyone in her age bracket.

She is also, notably, only 24 years old. The career described in this article — Broadway at ten, Stranger Things at fifteen, The Whale at twenty, Tony nomination at twenty-two, MCU at twenty-four — belongs to someone who has been making smart, consistent choices for over a decade. The interesting thing isn’t that she’s talented. Plenty of talented people exist. The interesting thing is the judgment. The willingness to do the difficult thing rather than the comfortable one.

That judgment is what makes the next decade of her career something genuinely worth paying attention to.

Sadie Sink Movies and TV Shows Complete List

Theatre

• Annie — Broadway (2012–2014)
• The Audience — Broadway (2015)
• John Proctor Is the Villain — Broadway (2025)
• Romeo & Juliet — West End, Harold Pinter Theatre (2026)

Television

• The Americans — Guest (2013)
• Blue Bloods — Guest (2014)
• American Odyssey — Recurring (2015)
• Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt — Guest (2015)
• Stranger Things — Max Mayfield (2017–2025)

Film

• Chuck (2016)
• The Glass Castle (2017)
• Fear Street Part 2: 1978 (2021)
• Fear Street Part 3: 1666 (2021)
• All Too Well: The Short Film (2021)
• The Whale (2022)
• Dear Zoe (2022)
• A Sacrifice (2024)
• O’Dessa (2025)

Upcoming

• Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026)
• John Proctor Is the Villain — Film (TBA)
• Avengers: Secret Wars (2027)

Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens in US theatres on July 31, 2026. Have a favourite Sadie Sink performance that didn’t get enough attention? Drop it in the comments.