I genuinely enjoy it when some “fresh face” has a major breakout, just because it’s nice to actually see some new people on-screen, and it’s fun to cover some young person on the come-up. Florence Pugh is definitely on the come up, and I think we’ll all have strong opinions about her by the end of the year. Florence is the star of Ari Aster’s latest horror film, Midsommar, which has already been screened for assorted critics and Jordan Peele, all of whom loved it. Then she’s one of the sisters – Amy – in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. Then she’s got a role in Scarlett Johansson’s stand-alone Black Widow movie. I’m telling you, Florence Pugh will be everywhere. So Vanity Fair did a “getting to know her” piece as Florence stands on the brink of becoming a big deal. Some highlights:

How she cried so much in Midsommar: “The majority of my time was literally wearing headphones [and] imagining my sisters dying. It was exhausting…I didn’t know if that was going to work. But that seemed to get me pretty distraught pretty quickly.” She paused, then joked: “I don’t know what that’s done to my mental health.”

She’s now horror-movie fan: In fact, she freely admits to hating the genre. But the Midsommar script felt different when she read it, at the urging of her team. At the time, Aster’s 2018 breakthrough, Hereditary, had just started earning buzz. “Everything about this script was beautiful,” she said. “Every single horrific thing that happened was written in a stunning way.”

Her accent work: Though she’s from Oxford, her American accent is also seamless. Pugh has always loved dialect work; as a child she reveled in impersonating her Yorkshire-born grandfather. (Accent-wise, think Sean Bean-esque.) “I used to basically take the mickey out of him,” Pugh said. “I would be like”—and here, she brings out the accent—“‘Oh, gram, get me a cup of tea! Get me a cup of tea and a cigar!’ I’d be like six, seven years old, just ripping into him.”

Working with Emma Thompson: “I love her. I don’t see her that often, but whenever I do, it’s like, Oh my goodness, I need you to tell me how to live my life.”

On Greta Gerwig: “She’s like the goofy big sister that everybody wants. She’s amazing, and she’s so bright, and so wonderfully weird. And it was just really wonderful to work with someone who had such a different way of seeing dialogue and scripts and timing.” Pugh spent equally as much time praising Laura Dern, who plays Marmee in the film. “Laura Dern is like the hippie mom that everybody wants,” she said. “You say one sentence of your problem, she’s like, ‘Oh, you need to get rid of them.’ Or like, ‘Oh, you should have that chocolate bar.’”

On Black Widow: “Black Widow is so needed. Every one of Black Widow’s fans have been so desperate for it. This story needs to be made. Her story needs to be glorified, and I think everybody’s just ready for it. Whether or not I’m attached, I’m excited to watch it. It’s about women, and it’s got an amazing female director, and there’s this whole story line that hasn’t been done before. And I think people are pumped for it, so I will say that. It’s very exciting for the Marvel Universe. And if I am part of it, if I’m not part of it—God, what a lucky girl.”

[From Vanity Fair]

I love these kinds of pieces, where everything is shiny and new and exciting to a young actor (she’s only 23) and they’re not jaded or grumpy or worried about revealing too much. Florence is being called the “new Kate Winslet,” which… I can see that, as far as looks go. But I’m hoping her accent work is better than Kate’s, especially if Florence is going to do so many American films and play so many Americans.

Here’s the Midsommar trailer:

Photos courtesy of WENN.