At 19, Florence Pugh heard the phrase many actresses fear from a Hollywood executive: you have to lose weight.
Instead of obeying, she stopped to think about whether she really wanted that path. “It simply wasn’t the person I wanted to be”, she recalled in an interview with TIME magazine in 2023. Since then, she has spoken frankly about the pressure women in film face to change their bodies and fit certain ideals of beauty.
When preparing for a role, she doesn’t think about losing weight to look better on screen. She prefers to imagine how the character lives, what they eat, and what their habits might be. In Vogue, she said that growing up in Spain with her parents and siblings taught her to see natural bodies as normal. “We are human, we are bodies”, she said.
In 2022, she made her point clear again. A sheer pink Valentino dress brought a wave of criticism, and she asked why a woman’s body provokes such intense reactions. She defended her right to dress however she wants without people commenting on her appearance.