I can’t really remember when I became aware of Florence Pugh. I guess it was around Midsomer, but she’d already established herself by then. I didn’t even see Midsomer, it was just like one day Florence was unknown to me an then she was everywhere I looked. But I’ve loved her in everything I have seen her in. Her opening scene in Hawkeye was such a fantastic introduction – and her character already had a whole-@$$ movie going into that series. Florence, or I guess Miss Flo if you’re nasty, got the Hollywood treatment, though, like so many other perfectly lovely, talented women. After finding early fame due to her enormous talent, those in the industry told her to slim down and change the shape of her face. Fortunately, Florence had the wherewithal to tell them ‘nope.’
Florence Pugh has revealed Hollywood bigwigs told her to slim down and change the shape of her face if she wanted success in the industry.
The 26-year-old actress said she was specifically told to “lose weight” and “change the shape” of her face if she wanted to bag the big roles and become a household name.
“I felt very lucky and grateful, and couldn’t believe that I had got this top-of-the-game job…” she said.
“[But] all the things that they were trying to change about me, whether it was my weight, my look, the shape of my face, the shape of my eyebrows, that was so not what I wanted to do, or the industry I wanted to work in.”
The Don’t Worry, Darling star, who has this week opened up about her early days in the entertainment industry, landed her first big role in 2014 movie The Falling.
She went on to land a part in a US TV movie Studio City, but was so disappointed in her experience on the show that she feared she’d made the wrong career choice.
She added to The Telegraph: “I’d thought the film business would be like [my experience of making] The Falling, but actually, this was what the top of the game looked like, and I felt I’d made a massive mistake.”
She added: “I think it’s far too easy for people in this industry to push you left and right and I was lucky enough to discover when I was 19 what kind of a performer I wanted to be.
Of course it was the US studio that wanted to change everything about the woman they’d just hired. Thank goodness Florence had it in her to stand her ground at 19. I wish talent was enough. Florence is clearly gifted, and she has plenty of personality to bring to the promotions. She’s a beautiful young woman. I realize it’s not the Hollywood Way to accept people as is, though. What an awful message to send anyone, let alone a young woman just leaving her teens. I hope that other young women realize that Florence didn’t make those changes and is now calling the shots in her career at the age of 26.
Photo credit: Ana M. Wiggins/Avalon Red and Instagram
Gorgeous gown. The skirt should be sitting a few inches lower, other than that the color, fabric and they way she wears it is perfect.
It’s not a skirt though? It’s a dress with a midriff cut out and it’s sitting exactly where it’s meant too?
The weight loss part doesn’t surprise me, that seems to happen to every female actor in Hollywood as soon as they make it. Part of it from constantly working & promoting (and all the red carpets they find themselves on), I’m sure, but most of it is from pressure to fit the HW ideal of the “perfect” woman and male fantasy. Props to her for resisting falling into that trap. And what about her face possibly needs to be changed?? She’s gorgeous!
I think it’s her face shape. I have round / square face shape with big cheekbones. So even though I am slim, I look fat (or wide) on camera and I have no jawline. She is also slim but may look bigger than she does on camera (not that it’s an excuse to belittle her). Some celebrities want to remain photogenic so they turn to buccal fat removal or jawline Botox. For example, my local celeb does Botox because she just wants to photograph better and easier i.e. get more jobs. They are also popular in China and South Korea because the oval face looks slimmer. Anyway I’m happy she is still herself.
I agree on your analysis of her face shape. Some people have a rounder face and no dieting is going to change that.
I think sh’e just short-waisted/long legged. I’m the same, but DD so silhouttes are…interesting on me! 😆
Why is being super skinny the preference of the male gaze though? I read once that it began with fashion designers (e.g.men, often gay) who wanted models to be less distracting to the male gaze like curvy Hollywood actresses, so they selected models who were more slender. Then slender ironically became the standard of beauty.
I’ve read that, too; that skinny models were only supposed to act as “clothes hangers,” essentially, where the clothes got more attention. So weird how that turned out.
I think slender women became coveted not as result of attracting more the male gaze; but as sort of a social trope. While appetite for fashion massified in the 50s and 60s, designers and producers found it easier to design, create and fit a flattering garment for a woman with long limbs and without bumps and lumps. Also: In the 70s and 80s, there was a very intense scientific conversarion on the need for exercise and diet, brought by the unstoppable rise on chronic illnesses. This fuelled a surge on gyms and weight loss products & methods. Which were embraced and promoted by succesful women as new paths to self-care and empowerment. Fashion, media and advertising incorporated all these visions, and at some point all women visually associated to an aspirational standard of living were lean. Rare beauties who were not only pretty, but also alender and tall, became both marketable and social trophies. It took the whole anorexia & bulimia debacle of the 90s and early 00s to call for more inclusive standards. So today someone like Ashley Graham or Christina Hendricks has at least a chance to be deemed as sexy as Gisele or Angelina
Literally every woman is too fat, all of the time, for these people. I’m so glad i never wanted an on-camera career.
Super skinny and gaunt is not a typical male fantasy, at all. It’s just these Hollywood exec types and also Anna Wintour types. It’s not what the vast majority of straight men want.
I think so much of the change comes from Hollywood being so male dominated and being all about the male gaze. I also have a crazy conspiracy theory that because some leading men in Hollywood are small (Tom Cruise comes to mind) that the women were made to be TINY so the men look bigger or average at least.
I hope Florence is as confident as she sounds. She is perfect as she is.
She did a podcast on Radio 4 called This Cultural Life this week where she discussed all this and her career as a whole
She came back from the US 2 weeks later after the pilot was not picked and she got cast in Lady MacBeth which kicked her career off
She is also in The Pack with Alex Skarsgaad that was announced an the weekend
She is gorgeous. I have never paid attention to her until she appeared in the film Black Widow. Now I am a big fan.
Funny this article should come out, we went to see DWD in the theater and I hadn’t seen Florence in anything other than photos on the internet. I always thought she was pretty but, on the big screen she was incandescent. I don’t know how to describe it, but still photos don’t do her justice. Her face, her figure, it was beautiful and perfect and in the scenes she was with OIivia Wilde (gossip notwithstanding) she blew her out of the water, looks and presence-wise. Olivia almost literally faded into the background compared to Florence. This woman has the IT factor that I didn’t always comprehend when people spoke of it.
It also helps that she has such an expressive and compassionate face. I LOVED her in Midsommer precisely because she was 100% believable as a regular college student with the nice but secretly a-hole boyfriend. Her reactions, character development and transformation in that film made you literally cheer for her and believe that she made the right decision in the end. It was such a good film (but so disturbing I need to seriously brace myself before watching it again), and she absolutely soared as the star.
Watched DWD yesterday (don’t ask me how, hehe) and again, she was the heart of the film. It was actually a decent film, but I agree with critics that “The Truman Show,” “Stepford Wife,” and “Pleasantville” did it better. It was a literal mix of those movies with a dash of equal parts “Black Mirror” and “Black Swan,” so it’s in good company but hardy as unique as OW thinks it is.
Has Hollywood never heard of… boring? as in geez, all of our female stars look the same, I wonder if anyone out there would like to see a tiny woman shaped slightly different than the rest? Or maybe they should stop hiring actors all together and just scoop up whomever happens to be on some fashion runway this week since body type is important above all?? I’m just so sick of hearing about how some tiny little lady is “fat” all because her arms are visible to the naked eye.
I’m glad she didn’t cave into the pressure to change her looks. She’s very pretty and stands out from the generic cookie-cutter blonde actresses out there. While other young blonde actresses may be as talented as Florence, I find that a lot of them look alike and I honestly have trouble telling them apart. I used think my mother, who was Japanese, was exaggerating when she used to say “all white people look the same, it’s hard to tell them apart” but with some of these actresses, I’m starting to see her point.
God forbid every bone cannot be seen. Quite frankly, alot of this promotion of extreme thinness comes from us women. @ Betty Rose mentions the fashion industry and I agree, but in my own experience in my youth working in the entertainment industry us women were extremely competitive and often cruel to ourselves and one another. Things are changing slowly and women like Florence are leading the way. She is intelligent, talented, beautiful and sexy. I hope the girls who look up to her see that they can be free and healthy.
@K internalized misogyny, the driving force behind women competing with other women over attracting the male gaze, is very complicated. It’s easy to say women are hardest on other women, but where does the mindset begin?
It doesn’t begin with normal boys and men. It just doesn’t. Follow the money on this one.
Depressing, but not surprising. I remember seeing her in Lady Macbeth and thinking what a normal healthy figure she had. She is an incredible actor and deserves great success.
I first saw her in Lady Macbeth, and she was freaking GREAT. She was just a teenager, and it was obvious she would be one to watch.