In an interview with The Times of London published Sunday, 28-year-old British star Florence Pugh detailed her struggles with fitting into Hollywood.
“There are fine lines women have to stay within, otherwise they are called a diva, demanding, problematic. And I don’t want to fit into stereotypes made by others,” Pugh said. “It is really exhausting for a young woman to just be in this industry, and actually other industries.”
Pugh has managed to enormously succeed despite those qualms. She made her debut in the film “The Falling” in 2014, then went on to roles in “Midsommar,” “Black Widow,” “Oppenheimer,” “Dune: Part Two,” and “Little Women,” the latter an Oscar-nominated turn.
But Pugh admits she loves challenging ideas, such as how women in the public eye are expected to look.
“I remember watching this industry and feeling that I wasn’t represented. I remember godawful headlines about how Keira Knightley isn’t thin anymore, or watching women getting torn apart despite being talented and beautiful,” she said. “The only thing people want to talk about is some useless crap about how they look. And so I didn’t care to abide by those rules.”
Pugh has not been silent in the past. She told The Telegraph in 2022 that she was told to lose weight and change her look by a television pilot at the beginning of her career. She also objected to a film review’s comment on her “chunky thighs” from 2019.
“I wanted to challenge how women were perceived, how we are supposed to look.
“Actually I wasn’t trying to challenge. I just wanted to be there, to make space for a version of a person that isn’t all the things they used to have to be,” Pugh said. “I’m proud I’ve stuck by myself and look the way I look — I’m really interested in people who are still angry with me for not losing more weight, or who just hate my nose ring.”
“I am not going to be able to just change the way that things are — but I can certainly help young women coming into this industry by making conversations happen where they weren’t before,” she added.
