The “crucial” movie that will inform Florence Pugh’s entire career: “For the rest of my life”
Every actor has that one movie that stands out as a turning point for them, even if it isn’t the greatest thing they’ve ever done, rather, it’s the film that marked a crucial moment in their career in terms of choice-making and pushing their boundaries, making them realise what they’re truly capable of.
For Florence Pugh, this was a movie that came in 2019, after she’d already proved herself with an incredible turn in the period drama Lady Macbeth, in which she played a young woman who becomes increasingly violent as she embarks on an affair, and her performance was spectacular, marking the start of a career that has taken her from British indies to Marvel blockbusters.
You might think that Pugh would consider one of her most “crucial” movies to be Midsommar or Little Women, both of which emerged that year and allowed her to truly break into Hollywood. Yet, it was a smaller British film that flicked a switch in Pugh’s brain, making her realise her love for a specific genre that she has since come back to several times.
Under the direction of comedian and actor Stephen Merchant, Pugh starred in Fighting With My Family, in which she appeared opposite Dwayne Johnson, and it’s an absolutely strange array of people to be involved in a film, with Lena Headey, Jack Lowden, Julia Davis, Vince Vaughn, and Nick Frost also rounding out the cast.
It might not have been an Oscar-nominated hit like the other movies Pugh starred in that year, but her role as the professional wrestler Paige, based on the real Saraya Bevis, was transformative for the actor, and until this moment, she had no idea how much she loved the physicality of a role, vowing to star in more action-oriented movies from that moment on.
“I think Fighting with My Family is so crucial for every single action thing that I ever do for the rest of my life, because it taught me that I really love it, and actually, I’m not that bad at it,” Pugh told Deadline.
“I love getting in there, and I hate it when I have to give a job to my stunt double, because that’s always the saddest part, when the cooler version of you steps onto set and can do everything, and you’re like, ‘Oh no!’”
While professional wrestler Tessa Blanchard performed the more intense wrestling stunts that Pugh wasn’t trained to do, she still got stuck in, and Pugh has since taken on various action roles, notably starring as Yelena Belova in Marvel’s Black Widow and Thunderbolts, which have seen Pugh attempt various stunts herself.
One of these stunts involved her jumping off the second-tallest skyscraper on the planet, Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118, which reaches 2,722 feet, and while Marvel were hesitant to allow the actor to perform the stunt herself, she was insistent, knowing that if she wanted to truly dedicate herself to the part, she’d have to strap herself in for the terrifying ordeal.
Perhaps Pugh will become the next Tom Cruise, with her experience on Fighting With My Family inspiring a love of action that has already seen her grapple with damn-near lethal stunts on par with the Mission: Impossible star.
