Hollywood superstar Sydney Sweeney has become a red carpet mainstay in recent years—but she has refused to stray too far from her roots in rural Idaho, where she is the proud owner of a stunning lake house where she and her family have been causing chaos for years.
Sweeney, 28, whose latest on-screen turn has seen her undergo a dramatic transformation to portray profession boxer, Christy Martin, opened up about her upbringing in a charming waterfront property during an appearance on Stephen Colbert‘s “Late Night,” explaining how she helped her family to reclaim their beloved home after it was sold by her great-grandparents.
The “Christy” actress explained that her family has resided in homes on the edge of the lake for generations, telling Colbert, 61, recalling: “My family have been living on this lake for five generations. My grandma was born and raised in this house, then she had my mom in the house, then I grew up in the house.”
That property, which was built in 1937 and is still owned by Sweeney’s mother, Lisa, according to records, sits adjacent to a dwelling that served as the home of the actress’ great grandparents for many years—providing a haven for the family to gather and “run amok.”
“The properties have all kind of been next to each other with all of the siblings,” the starlet, who is currently dating music mogul Scooter Braun, went on.
However, when her great-grandfather passed away around the same time that Sweeney was born, her great-grandmother was unable to afford upkeep on the abode—and ended up selling it to another couple.
But that didn’t stop the Sweeney clan from continuing to treat the collection of properties as their own personal playground, with the “Anyone But You” star admitting: “Growing up we would run across their backyard to my other cousins’.”
So, in 2022, Sweeney decided to take matters into her own hands—admitting that she simply walked up to the front door of her great-grandparents’ home and asked the new owners if she could buy it from them.
“Three years ago, I walked up, knocked on the door and said, ‘I want to buy back my great grandma’s house.’ And I did,” she recalled.
When Colbert asked how the couple felt about the decision to sell the home to Sweeney, she joked: “I
think they’re very happy that I did, because they would always say, ‘Oh my god this whole family, they’re always running amok.’ We run amok!”
In honor of that sweet-natured chaos, Sweeney added that she has christened the property “Camp Runamuck,” having purchased the home in an off-market deal in July 2022.
The property, according to records, sits on a half-acre lot on the edge of the lake and offers 2,932 square feet of living space, including two bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.
It also comes complete with a private dock—as does Lisa’s property, which sits next door.
Since closing on her Idaho dwelling, the actress has put the property to good use, revealing in a recent appearance on “Good Morning America” that she holed up in the dwelling while training for her role in “Christy.”
“It was so much fun, because I grew up in Idaho with my family, and my grandma’s my neighbor,” she said. “And I turned her shed into my ‘Rocky’ gym.
“I put flooring in and boxing bags, and I brought my trainers up there. And I had a boxing coach and a weight trainer. And every single day I would weight train in the morning and night, then I’d box for like two or three hours a day.”
Luckily, Sweeney was not starting her training from scratch, having spent much of her childhood taking part in kickboxing and grappling events, a hobby she developed after she began acting.
“I grew up playing a lot of sports—soccer, baseball—[but] when I started going back and forth from L.A., it was hard to do a team sport,” she told Colbert. “So my parents were like, let’s find something. My friends were kickboxing and I fell in love with it.”
However, she confessed that actually convincing her parents to allow her to pursue acting was a much tougher battle, revealing that she made a five-year business plan to try and convince them of her talents when she was just 10 years old.
“I put together a five-year business plan presentation when I was 10 years old,” she shared, adding that the PowerPoint centered largely around “why they should let me audition and the steps that we would take to become an actor.”
“It was a hard sell, it took a few years,” she added.
In the end, however, it proved to be a decision they would not regret. In recent years, Sweeney’s career has skyrocketed, starting with her dual roles in HBO hits “Euphoria” and “The White Lotus,” before expanding to the big screen with major movie projects like “Anyone But You” and “Madam Web.”
That success has enabled the actress to amass a staggering property portfolio of homes across the U.S., including a stunning retreat in the Florida Keys, which she purchased for $13.5 million in June 2024, as well as multiple dwellings in Los Angeles.
The starlet has proven herself to have quite the penchant for older fixer-uppers, having snapped up a fixer-upper mansion in Bel-Air, CA, for $9.3 million in 2023, two years after she bought a a Tudor home in Los Angeles for $3 million.
She has also been able to extend that good fortune to her family members—revealing in a 2024 interview with WhoWhatWear that she had paid off her mother’s mortgage.
And while her incredible career has given her the means to spread her wings far beyond her Idaho hometown, Sweeney has been clear that she wants to continue spending as much time there as possible.
“I go home all the time,” Sweeney told Travel + Leisure in March 2024. “What’s so beautiful about the Pacific Northwest is everything that you can do outdoors.
“There’s just hikes and nature, and you’re outdoors all the time.”
