Sweeney's television debut was at age five in a Kodak advertisement. A few years later, she was in the episode "I Can't Help Saying Goodbye" of the horror series Tales from the Darkside, playing a young girl who could sense when others were going to die shortly before their deaths. In 1988, she appeared on the short-lived ABC sitcom Family Man, and the following year, was cast as Christy McCray on Brand New Life, a miniseries from future X-Files creator Chris Carter that aired …