Florence Pugh may be one of the hottest young stars on the rise at the moment, but the climb to the top of the Hollywood food chain wasn’t an easy one.
The “Don’t Worry Darling” star, 26, recently got candid with the Telegraph about how film executives wanted her to change her look and lose weight when she was first starting out in the movie biz.
Pugh was 19 years old when she made the journey across the pond from England to the US to audition for the series “Studio City.”
However, producers on the show told her that in order to succeed, she needed to transform her appearance.
“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,” she noted.
Pugh continued: “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.”
While the TV series never made it to air, Pugh flew back to the UK to audition for — and ultimately star in — the drama “Lady Macbeth.”
The experience earned her great reviews and it made her become a cinephile once again. The “Midsommar” actress added: “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,” she said.
However, she confessed that the film world is not all that “glamorous,” but “that’s what I love.”
“When I get to be completely raw, that’s when I feel like I can really be watched,” Pugh stated.
Pugh then explained how she feels the most comfortable on set “when I could be naked at whatever size I was, and bare-faced.”
She also hoped that her acting can speak for itself. “There’s nothing for people to be distracted by: They can’t be like, ‘Oh, I don’t like the makeup.’ It was a wonderful reminder: ‘Oh, yeah — this is who you are,’ ” she pointed out.
Pugh is not shy about showing off her body when she goes out for a night on the town in recent months. She rocked a transparent hot-pink gown for the Valentino haute couture fashion show this past July.
She went sans brassiere once again during a Paris fashion week dinner earlier this month.