Sydney Sweeney and Marilyn Monroe Related? The Story Behind the Family Tree Shock

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents Sydney Sweeney and Marilyn Monroe Related? The Story Behind the Family Tree Shock.

Few stars are compared to Marilyn Monroe as often as Sydney Sweeney – and now there is apparently a solid reason for it. A genealogical investigation by the ancestry platform MyHeritage claims to have discovered that the two actresses are actually related. If you've seen TikTok videos or Instagram posts in recent months in which Sweeney has been edited alongside Monroe shots, there is suddenly more to it than just a stylistic resemblance.

For you, this means: the next "Sweeney as Monroe" comparison gets a family tree footnote – and if you're browsing MyHeritage or Ancestry yourself, you'll know how deep a single branch in U.S. immigration history can really reach.

The relationship MyHeritage claims to have found

According to the investigation, Sweeney (29) and Monroe (died 1962 at the age of 36) are ninth cousins once removed. Nine generations separate the two in the family line, plus a small offset through the generational difference – that is statistically far away, but surprisingly concretely documented, assuming the family tree data holds up.

How the family line leads to a Sandwich settler from the 17th century

The bridge between the two Hollywood stars is formed by their fathers: Sydney's father Steven Sweeney and Monroe's father Charles Stanley Gifford are both said to descend from a common ancestor – Ezra Perry. Perry lived in the 17th century and was one of the early settlers of the town of Sandwich in the U.S. state of Massachusetts. A lineage that would have stayed hidden without ancestry platforms.

Why a family connection is being checked right now

The trigger for the family tree check was, according to Promiflash, neither a family gathering nor an inquiry from the stars' inner circle, but the sheer mass of visual comparisons circulating on social media between the "Euphoria" star and the Hollywood legend. An internet meme turned into an ancestry project.

What Sweeney herself has to say about the discovery

Short and painful: nothing. Sydney Sweeney has so far neither publicly commented on the surprising family connection nor on the Monroe comparisons. Whether she saw the result before or after publication is not known.

What this really means for you

Genealogy platforms like MyHeritage work with church records, immigration documents, and family trees uploaded by other users – a connection at this level is therefore more of a statistical curiosity than a real family bond. If you're a Sweeney fan, the comparison therefore remains above all one thing: a quirky ancestor prank with genuine family tree trimmings.