Florence Pugh Fan - A Florence Pugh Fan Resource

Quotes

As an actor, it’s very interesting to make the audience love you while you are doing horrendous things.
I really take my hat off to anybody that steps in the ring because it’s so hard – you’re competing against your friends, and you’re working in front of an audience who tells you exactly what they’re thinking.
I like a role where some of the character’s motivations are confusing or at least interesting.
There’s always going to be pressure, and there’s always going to be an area where you disappoint. As a storyteller, you have to understand that.
It’s always shocking when you see a modern woman in a period storyline. It doesn’t make sense.
I used to reenact ‘Titanic’ all the time.
Playing Paige, I felt I had to train to wrestle.
I’ve tried not to get too bogged down by what people want you to be.
Wearing a corset is extremely uncomfortable.
Every time ‘Lady Macbeth’ and everyone involved in the film gets nominated, it’s amazing.
I don’t think I’m going to be an international sex symbol. I mean, I know I’m not going to be an international sex symbol.
Why aren’t there these epic roles for women, for whatever age you are?
Someone asked if I wanted to be the first female Bond, and I was saying that I don’t think we necessarily need that whole conversation.
The one thing that I always try and take with me, if there’s, like, a remake, or you’re doing something again, is that every generation has a new story to tell.
I love all of Kate Winslet’s characters. And Natalie Portman. If I can have a smidgen of what they’ve done, that would be awesome.
There was one moment when I was in L.A., and he was teaching me a move. I just looked at him, thinking, ‘Oh my God, I’m being taught to wrestle by Dwayne Johnson. What the hell?’
I know that my way of tackling a character is very different.
‘The Falling’ was a big, flashy, bizarre experience. I kept on saying at the time it was a fluke because I did the audition, and I didn’t think anything would come of it.
I got a really good insight into the world of wrestling.
That, for me, actually is the most important thing about doing a period film is trying to make these people as lovable as they are back then.
What’s important is to listen before you react.
‘The Silence of the Lambs’ is my favourite book, favourite film.
The fact that I’ve been nominated for a BAFTA is insane.
You are hugely responsible for people following you. You need to work out why you are posting, what the message is, and what you are doing to these people.
I was acting with all my childhood heroes: Meryl Streep, Saoirse Ronan, all of those amazing women.
I don’t want to feel like I have to change myself or my image.
With ‘Lady Macbeth,’ I had two other things offered to me, and they would have also been very fun, but you just have to figure that out. And then you do it.
If people are noticing the hard work I’m doing, then that’s a wonderful thing.
When you’re given a platform, and you’re allowed to perform, and someone’s there to heighten you as opposed to dampen you, that’s a nice feeling.
I wrestled at the Staples Centre at ‘Monday Night Raw’ when I was 21 years old.
I played Mary at the age of seven in my first nativity play, and I loved it – there is something so fascinating about embodying someone else.
If you look at it, the corset is a very beautiful item, but when I put one on, I realized how little you could actually move. And I’m a very physical person: I talk with my hands. And I felt how the clothes took that away from me. And that was the idea, I think. It was a way of limiting women.
I think there’s always some good reason to try and modernize most period things, because at the end of the day, they may have, I suppose, used a different language or a different etiquette, but ultimately, these are still people that loved and breathed and lived and ate and weed and pooed just like we do now.
For me, it’s always been so obvious that the less we can edit our lives and more we show how normal we all are, the better.
The Kate Winslet thing has been a shocker. I was like, that is the most ridiculous claim. Amazing, obviously. She’s been my idol since I re-enacted ‘Titanic’ and fell in love with Leo. And it’s a privilege to be called the next anything. But I suppose to be the next you is all you can do.
I have learned how to wrestle. You end up battered and blue – but so happy.
If I can make my mark just a little bit, then great.
I’m a bit of a gypsy. I live everywhere; I live out of a bag.
I think you’re always attracted by characters that are a little bit like you, or at least the worst parts of you that you can finally accept and say, ‘All right, at least I know that now!’
I grew up in a very loud and dramatic household, and we loved being in the spotlight.
We’re learning things every decade we grow through, and ultimately, you do end up with a different way of looking at things.
My dad still collects newspaper clippings about me.
For me, I really appreciate seeing real bodies on screen, that variation, not the same frames we saw for the majority of our upbringing, making us feel like we have to look that way.
I wanted to go to drama school, but when I got the part in ‘Falling,’ I got an agent, so it seemed a good idea to work. I always did a lot of singing and dancing, so I am glad it worked out that way. I would like to study stage acting at some point, though.
I think it’s good to not edit your life too much, or you give people different standards.
The whole wrestling art, it’s a whole form, is performance, and that’s what makes it so exciting to do.
I hope to create characters that people want to watch – and they either want to be or are, or it’s something that they recognize.
I want women on-screen that we all either want to be, or we know, or we recognize.
Throughout my life, I’ve been that annoying kid on every stage at school, in every talent contest.
I think everyone’s always interested in playing a spy, right? That’s something we grow up admiring, which is so strange, but it’s just a very clever and quick world that we all want to be a part of.
I grew up in a very loud family where you had to fight to get your voice heard, in a good way.
What we don’t realise when we watch a normal film is how many times someone has run in just before a shot quickly to wipe away that sweaty moustache. You never see a normal spot, a bag under the eye or an unplucked eyebrow, because that’s not how Hollywood works.
I remember being about six years old, for the first day of school, and sitting in the back of a Chrysler, pretending to cry while listening to Tracy Chapman.
Why shouldn’t there be more epic, brilliant female characters onscreen?
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.
My characters do have some fantastic taste in men.
In order for us to appreciate this world, we have to be a bit more honest, and I hope I do that.
I always hate it when I see the wrong person in massive roles, so for me, my biggest fear would be accepting a role I thought I wouldn’t find the rhythm of.
During the Me Too breakthrough, I was hanging out with Emma Thompson and Emily Watson – two people I’ve looked up to my entire life. Talking to those women was so empowering.
There’s a reason why there’s a problem with bodies, and it’s because you never actually get to see any normal versions of them.
I do like a bit of danger. Guns, cars, running, bullets. I’m up for it.
Everybody’s story of getting into the industry is just as difficult as the next person. Whether you come from money or no money, it’s not easy… you have to offer yourself; you can’t expect someone to get you.
I think it’s so interesting which ways your career can go. I would have been a completely different actor doing a completely different story, and I would have missed ‘Lady Macbeth.’
I found out I got ‘The Little Drummer Girl’ and my BAFTA nomination in quick succession, and I just didn’t expect it to be like that. I thought there would be a lot more time in between. It’s been an overwhelming experience.
I can’t remember a Friday when I was younger when I wasn’t eating a pizza, flirting with the barman.
I have been enormously lucky. My first role was in a great film by a woman director.
The biggest thing about ‘Lady Macbeth’ is the fact that people are so surprised that this woman is so amazing, and really, it shouldn’t be so amazing that this incredible character is on our screens.
I love Le Carre’s writing.
Do we need to have a female Bond? Couldn’t we just make something new?
In ‘Fighting With My Family,’ there’s a scene where I have to wrestle; I have to do the famous fight between Paige and AJ Lee. We actually did perform it in front of all those thousands of people. And just beforehand, we had a little dress rehearsal, and there were all these famous wrestlers going around and watching as well. Terrifying.
As beautiful as cinema is, it’s a massive part of the problem of why we look at ourselves in the way we do.
We tend to kind of write women out of history.
I love watching faces as they grow up. It’s the difference between so many strong British actresses compared to what America does to women. I like a face that hasn’t been tampered with.
What audiences love with series is that they can invest in characters for such a long period of time, and it’s the same for actors. You can truly tell your story; then it’s done.
Girls have that wonderful thing where they try to throw each other off, not wanting to appear too eager.
If you ever want to be interrogated, get Michael Shannon to do it. He’s an amazing man. I loved working with him.
Sometimes in the real world, there is fire between people.
I can definitely hold my hands up and say wrestling wasn’t something that I grew up watching.
I am learning on every job I do. There is something new every time.
I’ve been told to be skinny before – it’s already happened, but it’s up to you to either listen or say no. I’m not listening.
‘Lady Macbeth’ is a great opportunity for me to prove that maybe the outcome of ‘The Falling’ was not necessarily a fluke.
When I look for roles, I am looking for incredibly powerful women.
Feisty women are my calling!
The women I’m attracted to playing I hope will mean something to someone.
Something that I’ve always been really keen on representing is some honesty with the way that we view ourselves. That’s something I’ve always appreciated watching actors that I’ve looked up to, is when they look like you and me, or they have a funny elbow, or they have, you know, a hairy face.
[on living in Spain for three years] Even though we moved out there for other reasons, looking back on it, I’m so happy I had that childhood – in and out of the sea naked, cycling down the road in my knickers, and bartering with the sweet shop owner.
I really appreciate playing fascinating and interesting women. They don’t always have to be likeable. I enjoy women who have something to say, they have a point that they represent.
With the life I’ve been lucky enough to live in the last two years, I’ve had to live out of bags.
I find it hard to do anything halfway. I love to feel it all.
My entire life I’ve always appreciated the slightly cheeky or naughty characters in books or in films. I think it’s a piece of us we can all appreciate because I feel like there’s an inner bratty child in all of us.
[on the schools that she attended on not supporting her decision to go into acting] For a long time it was like, ‘I know these people don’t back me’, because they didn’t.