The performance that changed Florence Pugh’s life: “Such a weird, small budget movie”
Florence Pugh is known for playing complicated, ferocious women. Just when it seemed like all the movie stars were reaching their pensioner years, Pugh burst onto the scene with an abundance of star power and an astonishing dramatic range. She can do subtlety, nuance, and raw emotion like few others, and her early roles quickly rocketed her to A-list status.
In Hollywood, Pugh rose to prominence with films like Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling. Each pushed her into wildly different territory, cementing her place as one of the greats from a very early age. Once she joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe to play Yelena Belova, she slotted in right next to movie stars like Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey Jr, who have one foot in critically acclaimed, original cinema and one foot in the opposite place.
Pugh’s rise seemed meteoric, but she wasn’t born in Hollywood, and she didn’t become an overnight celebrity. Still, her talent and skill were evident from the beginning. Her 2014 debut, Carol Morley’s The Falling, saw her playing a charismatic teenager at a girls’ school who becomes the centre point of a fainting epidemic. It was a supporting role, but she stole every scene. Two years later, she got a blank canvas to work with.
William Oldroyd’s Lady Macbeth was the type of showcase that few female actors ever get, let alone ones who are just beginning their careers. Set in rural Northumberland in the mid-19th century, it stars Pugh as Katherine, the young wife of a cold farmer. Trapped in the estate, she begins a torrid affair with one of the farmhands, setting a series of tragedies in motion.
The most notable thing about the film is how frosty and ruthless it is. It’s lacking in the sort of melodrama that the plot would suggest and instead focuses on the coldness and cruelty of the characters. Katherine is a victim of her husband and her environment, but that is the only thing that makes her sympathetic. She is just as harsh and cruel as those around her. For anyone who enjoys romanticising 18th and 19th-century England through Jane Austen or Elizabeth Gaskell, Lady Macbeth is a bitter wake-up call.
For Pugh, it was life-changing. “Lady Macbeth was the thing that I really could show who I was as a performer,” she said. “[It] kind of allowed… that to be my piece, to say ‘This is the kind of stuff I want to be in. This is the kind of performer I am. And these are the kind of actors that I could only dream of working with.’” In an interview with Jimmy Kimmel, she called it “such a weird, small budget movie,” and noted that it had done more than any other film for her career.
She received widespread acclaim for her performance, and although the Baftas embarrassed themselves by not nominating her, and the Oscars were sleeping on the job as usual, it found its audience and became Pugh’s calling card. Even after nearly a decade of other great performances, it still stands as her best.
