Florence Pugh’s five best roles so far
Florence Pugh’s career has been incredibly varied. Cast in her first movie at the age of 17, the English actor has starred in everything from period dramas such as Little Women and The Wonder to superhero movies and folk horrors like Midsommar.
With a bubbling film career that looks set to continuously boil down some of the best acting Pugh has delivered, the actor has become an icon of her generation.
Born in Oxford, England, Pugh made her screen debut in the 2014 drama The Falling at the age of 17. The following year she relocated to Los Angeles to record an ill-fated American TV show.
After feeling the pressure of the LA lifestyle, she returned to her roots to make Lady Macbeth, based on the 1865 Russian novella of the same name. Though she has been a fixture of the big screen for many years now, she remains one of the most refreshing and continually surprising female actors around. These are her five best roles so far.
Florence Pugh’s five best roles so far
Lady Macbeth (William Oldroyd, 2017)
People tend to forget Lady Macbeth. Released in 2017, this gothic exploration of stifling Victorian domesticity arrived a full two years before Pugh’s 2019 breakthrough and sees the actor at the very height of her powers.
Pugh plays Katherine, the new wife of a cruel Northumbrian industrialist, who is forced to stay indoors against her wishes. Hungry for companionship and determined to end the tedium of her existence, she begins an affair with one of her husband’s workers. When he returns unexpectedly and catches them together, things take an even darker turn. Nestled somewhere between Wuthering Heights, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Lady Macbeth has to be one of the most intoxicating projects Pugh has ever worked on.
Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)
2019 was a big year for Florence Pugh. Of the three films she starred in that year, Ari Aster’s A24 production Midsmommer made the biggest impact, introducing her to a mainstream audience following her appearance in the biographical wrestling drama Fighting With My Family.
At once sumptuous, cathartic and intensely harrowing, Midsommar stars Pugh as Dani, the traumatised, long-suffering girlfriend of Christian. Following the death of her sister, mother and father, the couple decides to take a trip to their Swedish friend’s home village, where the annual midsummer festival, an increasingly grisly affair, is in full swing.
Little Women (Great Gerwig, 2019)
Also released in 2019, this delightful costume drama, based on Louisa May Alcott’s much-adapted novel of the same name, introduced audiences to a rather more gentile version of Florence Pugh.
Many actors have taken on the role of Amy March, the firey, ambitious sister of Jo, Beth and Meg March, but few have captured her fire and determination quite like Pugh. The film tells the story of the four sisters while their father is off sighting in the American Civil War. A tale of youth, home and the importance of family, this periodic romance is as much a document of sisterly love as that between Joe and Laurie.
Black Widow (Cate Shortland, 2021)
A far cry from Lady Macbeth, Black Widow saw Pugh enter the Marvel Comic Universe for the first time, marking her entry into the upper echelons of Hollywood. Oftentimes actors at the top of their game lose that initial desire to bring something unique to their roles. Not Pugh.
In this explosive 2021 action thriller, Pugh plays Yelena Belova, the sister of Scarlett Johanssen’s Natasha Romanoff, aka Black Widow, who were both adopted by surrogate parents and put through intensive military training. After a lifetime of running from her past, Natasha is forced to confront the darkness that defined her early life and mend the fractured relationships she abandoned to become an Avenger. Enter Florence Pugh in full badass mode.
The Wonder (Sebastian Lelio, 2022)
Released in 2022, The Wonder is a reminder of all those things that made Pugh so watchable in Lady Macbeth. In this brooding period thriller, she shines like a flickering gas lamp.
Directed by Sebastian Lelio and based on the novel by Emma Donoghue, The Wonder takes place in the wake of the Great Famine of 1845-1852, during which roughly one million Irish died of starvation following crop failures. Pugh plays Lib Wright, a former nurse in the Crimean War, who is sent to a remote farm in Ireland to observe a young girl who has apparently been fasting for four months. Haunting, mystical and nuanced, we liked it so much that we gave it four and a half stars.
