Sydney Sweeney says women, including herself, find it hard to ask for help as they don't want to be viewed as "weak"

She told Sky News: "I have a really hard time with asking for help and my friends recently have really pointed that out to me, and they're like, 'Sydney, it's okay to ask. Like, you can'. There's nothing wrong with it, but I have really a hard time with it."

She continued: : "I think it's hard, especially as a woman, there's so many expectations on us to have it all together.

"And if we do ask for help, then it's a sign of weakness. And we don't want to be viewed that way, even though, [a man] can ask for it, and no one's like, 'ah, he's weak'. But if a woman director asks for help, it'd be like, 'oh, she's not prepared for this role'."

The 57-year-old former boxer and domestic abuse survivor recently praised Sydney's portrayal in Christy and said she had the "competitive spirit" needed to bring her to life on the big screen.

Christy told Flickering Myth: "She did a great job. What's interesting that maybe a lot of people don't know is that she actually has an MMA background from when she was a teenager. So she already has that competitive spirit. The boxing, she enjoyed.

"I actually feel like she had fun with this role because it's so out of character for her that it was challenging, but yet fun for her to be something that wasn't the norm."

She is a trailblazer in the boxing world but was also the victim of an attempted murder attempt by her abusive husband Jim Martin and she wanted the biopic to cover all aspects of her story.

She explained: "From the beginning I said, 'This movie has to be promoted as a life movie, not as a sports movie.'

"I think that there are so many different groups of people that this movie can give strength and hope to and then help that they know that people are out there to support them, whether it be with domestic violence, sexuality, or I refer to myself as the ultimate underdog.

"There's nothing special about this coal miner's daughter from a very small town in southern West Virginia. So if I can do it, if I can get up off the floor, if I can make it to the top of the boxing world that no other woman has ever done before, they can also do whatever their dream is."

Although she didn't want to be a sports movie, Christy hopes that the biopic will resonate with modern female pugilists.

She said: "I really don't want this to be looked at as a sports movie, but because boxing obviously is a backdrop, I think that it makes a big statement that bringing women's boxing to the forefront will also get people's attention so that these fighters who are fighting now will remember, 'Hey Christy Martin had a lot to do with why we have some of the paydays. We're getting some of the exposures we had here, 25, 30 years later. Somebody else put in a lot of work to make this possible for us today.'"