By Florence Pugh felt she’d ‘made a massive mistake’
Florence Pugh has reflected on her early acting days, as she felt she’d ‘made a massive mistake’.
During her interview with The Telegraph, the British actor, 26, spoke about being pressured to change her appearance completely at age 19, after landing a leading role.
Pugh made the move from her life in the UK to Los Angeles, as she landed the lead role in a pilot. The role, for TV show ‘Studio City, is about a pop star on the rise.
“I felt very lucky and grateful, and couldn’t believe that I had got this top-of-the-game job,” Pugh told The Telegraph.
However, once she got the part, executives began telling her she needed to make changes.
“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,” Pugh said.
Two years before this, Pugh made her on-screen debut in “The Falling,” a British psychological drama,
“I’d thought the film business would be like [my experience with] ‘The Falling,’ but actually, this was what the top of the game looked like, and I felt I’d made a massive mistake,” Pugh said, regarding her time on ‘Studio City’.
The pilot wasn’t picked up for the series, and Pugh returned to England feeling like her career was over, but two weeks later, she landed an audition for “Lady Macbeth,” which she ended up starring in.
“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,” she told The Telegraph.
“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.”
In 2018, Pugh told The Guardian about ‘Studio City’:
“What I’ve noticed about Hollywood is, if you go out there shouting about who you are, they will love you for it. But if you go out not knowing what it is that you’re representing, and you are just a canvas, they will make you into the thing they need you to be.”
(Image:FlorencePugh/Instagram)
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