The working environment of the movie industry can simultaneously be one of the most amazing and also the most toxic environments to work in, and it’s especially harder when you’re an actor. Weight limitations, beauty standards, and so on are just one of the many deplorable aspects of Hollywood, and an actor like Florence Pugh has been through them as well.
It is quite liberating to see an actor who does not have the ‘ideal’ look of a movie star making it into the big leagues. Pugh started off strong with her portrayal of the famous professional wrestler Paige in Fighting With My Family, and it’s just been uphill since then for her. Thankfully, it all worked out, but it almost didn’t either!
When Florence Pugh Almost Dropped Out Of Acting As A Career
Working in an environment like the one that the movie industry has can be quite overwhelming, especially if you’re a new actor who is just simply looking to broaden their horizons. Which is mainly why you just get actors in movies who are there for the ‘looks’.
In case of Florence Pugh, that notion of catering to the conventional ‘beauty’ standard of an actor doesn’t really matter because her acting skills simply overshadow the standard that the movie industry expects of its movie stars.
However, just like every newcomer in the industry, Pugh has also been very much subject to these expectations. It got so bad to the point that she was shamed for her body weight, which almost made her quit.
During an interview with The Telegraph, the Midsommar star spoke about the days when she was starting out as an actor, back when her ‘only’ shot at making it into Hollywood was simply to change her appearance.
The 27-year-old actor had earned herself a dream- a role in the television pilot of a series in which she was to play an emerging pop star. She says-
“I felt very lucky and grateful, and couldn’t believe that I had got this top-of-the-game job.”
She was elated to have landed the role, but an incident put her off of it-
“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,”
“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.”
Hollywood is a very huge industry, and it would’ve been quite alienating to be told that you simply do not fit the beauty standard!
Florence Pugh, However, Rose Back Up
After being body-shamed for simply not fitting into a role, Florence Pugh‘s confidence must’ve definitely gone down. In fact, she had flown back to England after the incident occurred and it just felt like her career was done and dusted.
However, as Pugh says in the very same interview with The Telegraph, things took a wild turn for her as the universe presented her with another opportunity in the acting field once again and it completely changed her mind-
“Then two weeks later, I had an audition for Lady Macbeth. And that made me fall back in love with cinema – the kind of cinema that was a space where you could be opinionated, and loud, and I’ve stuck by that.”
“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.”
It surely paid off- the Don’t Worry Darling star’s performance in Lady Macbeth was met with critical applause and love. For example, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian in his review of the movie (which he gave a full 5 out of 5) described Pugh’s performance as “lethally charismatic … both sphinx and minx”.
Lady Macbeth is currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: Harper’s Bazaar
