Sadie Sink Recalls Anxiety While Performing ANNIE on Broadway

Like so many performers, Sadie Sink has dealt with her share of stage fright.

In a new profile on Variety, the Stranger Things star recalled the pressure she felt playing the title role in the 2012 revival of Annie on Broadway when she was only 11 years old. Though she had already been acting for three years, her love for singing "just flipped...Singing became the worst thing ever. I was terrified by it," the actress said.

Sink's panic attacks were triggered by her attempt at perfection in her performance and, when perfection didn't happen, it took the joy out of the job.

“I didn’t want to sing ever again," she told Variety.

She returned to Broadway two years later in The Audience with Helen Mirren and forced herself to perform, despite the return of her anxiety: "I told myself, ‘Sadie, if you don’t do this, what else do you have?’ The anxiety had already taken singing from me. If acting was gone, then it’s just all gone.” 

Sink later rose to prominence in Netflix's Stranger Things as Max Mayfield (she will return for Season Five) and also starred alongside Brendan Fraser in the 2022 drama The Whale, based on the Samuel D. Hunter play.

Though she gave up singing for several years, Sink will be showing off her vocals once again in the rock opera film O'Dessa, which is due out in 2025.

Read the full story at Variety.