‘Euphoria’ Star Sydney Sweeney and Marilyn Monroe Are Family? New Study Backs Up the ‘Modern Marilyn’ Hype

For years, the comparisons between Sydney Sweeney and Marilyn Monroe have followed the actress from one red carpet to the next. Every vintage curl, every old-Hollywood gown and every bombshell-adjacent headline has fueled the same question: is she the modern Marilyn?

Sweeney has leaned into the buzz. At the Los Angeles premiere of ‘The Housemaid’ in December, she wore a plunging white Galia Lahav gown with a feathered skirt that echoed Monroe’s wind-swept look in ‘The Seven Year Itch’. Two months later, at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, she accepted a Virtuosos Award in a vintage Ceil Chapman gown that closely mirrored the dress Monroe wore on her first Life magazine cover in April 1952.

Now the comparison has a paper trail. According to a new study from the genealogy platform MyHeritage, which TMZ shared in a post that has already racked up 2.2M views, Sweeney and Monroe are 9th cousins, once removed. The two blonde stars, it turns out, share a branch of the same family tree.

The link runs through the women’s fathers. Sweeney’s father, Steven Sweeney, and Monroe’s biological father, Charles Stanley Gifford, are both descendants of Ezra Perry, an early English settler in Sandwich, Massachusetts. Perry lived from around 1625 to 1689.

The “once removed” part simply means the two women sit 1 generation apart on the tree. That puts the shared ancestor roughly 10 generations back, a distance that leaves room for more than 2,000 ancestor slots. In other words, this is a very long-range connection.

MyHeritage says the search was inspired by the constant comparisons. Roi Mandel, the company’s director of research, explained that the years of parallels drawn between the 2 actresses prompted researchers to look for a genuine bond in the company’s archives. He called the discovery a reminder that humanity is one vast, interconnected family tree.

It is a neat piece of timing, given how often the ‘Euphoria’ star has been tied to Monroe. The comparisons even extend to her appearance at a Vanity Fair Oscars party, where CNN described a striking resemblance to the screen legend. Sweeney’s stylist, Molly Dickson, later confirmed that the Santa Barbara look was intentionally inspired by Monroe’s famous magazine cover.

Before anyone starts planning a family reunion, a few caveats are worth noting. Sweeney was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1997, and Monroe died in 1962, so any family link has to sit many generations back. The finding is also based on a records search through MyHeritage’s archives rather than a published DNA test, and Sweeney has not publicly confirmed the result.

MyHeritage has made celebrity cousin announcements before. The company previously reported that ‘Friends’ co-stars Matthew Perry and Courteney Cox were distant cousins, and it has also tied Taylor Swift’s family tree to Louis XIV. Sweeney and Monroe now join that growing list of famous relatives.

Fans have been calling Sweeney a modern Marilyn for years, pointing to her blonde bombshell looks and her old-Hollywood styling. This latest news gives that nickname an unexpected twist, since the comparison now has genealogy behind it as well as fashion.

Whether the cousin connection is a fun footnote or a sign that the Monroe energy really does run in the family, it has already given the internet something new to talk about. And with Sweeney’s love of classic Hollywood glamour showing no signs of slowing down, future red carpet moments are bound to be read through this new lens.

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