Four centuries apart, are Sydney Sweeney and Marilyn Monroe related?
New reports hint Sydney Sweeney’s ties to Marilyn Monroe go far beyond lookalike glam — and the twist isn’t about style.
Genealogy sleuths at MyHeritage traced Sydney Sweeney and Marilyn Monroe back to a 17th-century New Englander named Ezra Perry, who lived in Sandwich, Massachusetts. The paper trail links the actresses through Sweeney’s father, Steven Sweeney, and Monroe’s biological father, Charles Stanley Gifford, according to research first highlighted by Entertainment Weekly.
Sweeney and Monroe are ninth cousins, once removed.
The find lands four centuries up the family tree and adds a quirky footnote to all those visual comparisons. Sweeney has openly leaned into Monroe-style glamour, even recreating the iconic pose and dress from one of Monroe’s famous LIFE magazine appearances.
Born in Spokane in 1997, Sweeney moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and broke out on Euphoria before earning raves in The White Lotus and later headlining the romantic comedy Anyone But You. Past reporting has pointed to Irish and German roots in her wider family history.
Hollywood ’s far-flung cousins
Sweeney and Monroe aren’t the only stars with surprising branches on the tree. Celebrity lineages have turned up some wild links over the years:
- Meryl Streep — distantly related to William Penn; PBS traced her maternal line through Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, with German and Swiss ancestry in the mix.
- Tom Hanks — identified as a distant relative of Abraham Lincoln.
- Benedict Cumberbatch — related to King Richard III.
- Robert Pattinson — family tree linked to Vlad the Impaler.
- Marilyn Monroe — previously surfaced in genealogy stories tied to Paris Hilton.
For Sweeney and Monroe, the shared thread runs through colonial-era Ezra Perry in Sandwich — the common ancestor that makes them ninth cousins, once removed.