Actress Florence Pugh is a rising star that has had an impressive last two years. Pugh has proved her vulnerability as an actress with movies like Fighting with my Family, Midsommar, and Little Women -- the latter movie even earned her an Academy Award nomination. Pugh will make her MCU debut in Cate Shortland's Black Widow, which will include plenty of action sequences and intense physical work. But it turns out that she loves getting down and dirty for an acting role.
As Florence Pugh's star power continues to grow, she's taken roles in vastly different projects. Many of these movies required a very physical and emotionally draining performance. Fighting With my Family included wrestling training, Black Widow will basically make her a superhero, and Midsommar involved grueling emotional sequences. But according to Pugh, that's how the magic happens. As she recently explained,
I love getting dirty and I love getting cold. It only helps your performance, anything that's physical. I can't stand faking things. I love being able to do stuff. Being able is so important. When someone comes up to you and says, 'Hey, can we shoot you getting out of a water tank 15 times while still wearing wet clothes?' you can go, 'Yeah, I can do that. I can do that, because I'm able and I'm strong.'
How very meta of her. It looks like the grueling or difficult part of shooting a movie is actually Florence Pugh's bread and butter. Mainly because it helps to inspire a very real performance. And its a system that seems to work for her, considering how strong Pugh's performances consistently are.
Florence Pugh explained her approach to acting peeling back the curtain behind the 24 year-old actress' process. Movie sets have notoriously grueling schedules, even for a movie that doesn't require stunts and action sequences. But Pugh has taken on particularly challenging roles, which required a physical performances. But rather than taking umbrage with this, she actually thinks it helps her performances have a sense of realism.
This approach to acting doesn't merely relate to movies like Black Widow and Fighting With my Family, which required her to do a ton of physical training in order to accomplish fight sequences. It also relates to extremely emotional work, like her role as Dani in Ari Aster's Midsommar. Later in her conversation with THR, Florence Pugh explained what attracted her to Midsommar, saying:
When I read Midsommar, the whole point of Dani is that she's suffering with this tremendous amount of grief and anxiety, and I have never come close to any grief like that at all. So, when I was reading it, as exciting as the script looked, I was very aware that I would have to be in pain like she was.
She wasn't wrong. Dani is in emotional anguish throughout most of Midsommar's 148-minute runtime, starting from the chilling suicide sequence. The movie required all of Florence Pugh's emotions, as she wept, panicked, wailed, and screamed. It's a stunning performance by Pugh, but one that likely kept her in a state of pain and anxiety throughout filming. This is just another way that she put her physicality into a role, as that heightened state no doubt had an exhausting affect on her nervous system.
It should be interesting to see how Florence Pugh's character in Black Widow factors into the story. She's Natasha's chosen "sister", but the plot of the movie remains largely a mystery. But Pugh's costuming might indicate a connection to Avengers: Infinity War.
It's currently unclear when Black Widow will arrive, as the movie was delayed from its May 1st date due to theaters closing. Be sure to check out our 2020 release list to plan your next trip to the movies.
