50 Fun Facts About Florence Pugh

In which English city was Florence Pugh born?

Oxford: her father ran restaurants in the city, and Pugh links performing to growing up in what she calls 'a big eating family'.

Pugh's family moved to which country when she was three, hoping warmer weather would ease her breathing problems?

Spain: they lived on the southern coast until she was six because of tracheomalacia, a condition in which the windpipe partly collapses and which had put her in hospital again and again.

Which actor, Game of Thrones' Trystane Martell, is Florence Pugh's brother?

Toby Sebastian: born Sebastian Pugh, he works under a stage name, and brother and sister released the single 'Midnight' together in 2021.

Pugh made her acting debut in which 2014 film, opposite Maisie Williams?

The Falling: still in sixth form, she played a schoolgirl whose death sets off a fainting epidemic among her classmates, and the part brought a Best British Newcomer nomination at the London Film Festival.

What did Pugh say executives on her unsold 2015 pilot Studio City pushed her to change?

Her looks: she said they wanted to alter everything from her weight to the shape of her eyebrows, and when the pilot was dropped she went home and auditioned for Lady Macbeth two weeks later.

Pugh's 2016 breakthrough Lady Macbeth borrows only its title from Shakespeare, adapting a novella from which country?

Russia: Nikolai Leskov's 1865 story Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District was moved to Northumberland and filmed on a micro budget, with an ending that drops the heroine's punishment.

Which actor plays Laurie opposite Pugh and Saoirse Ronan in Little Women (2019)?

Timothée Chalamet: his Laurie proposes to Ronan's Jo, is turned down, and ends the story married to one of her sisters.

Pugh voices Kiriko in the English dub of which Hayao Miyazaki film?

The Boy and the Heron: Miyazaki had announced his retirement in 2013 and then changed his mind, and his first feature in ten years gave Pugh her part beside Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson.

Which prize did Pugh win for Lady Macbeth?

A British Independent Film Award: best actress in 2017 for the part that, she says, made her fall back in love with cinema after a bruising first taste of Hollywood.

Pugh played Cordelia opposite which actor's King Lear in a 2018 TV film?

Anthony Hopkins: Richard Eyre's BBC film cut the play to under two hours and moved it to a militarised present-day London, with Emma Thompson and Emily Watson as Cordelia's sisters.

In Outlaw King, Pugh played Elizabeth de Burgh, wife of which Scottish king played by Chris Pine?

Robert the Bruce: the Netflix epic opened the Toronto festival to a cool response, so its director cut 20 minutes before most viewers saw it.

The Little Drummer Girl, Pugh's 2018 miniseries, adapts a spy novel by which author?

John le Carré: Korean director Park Chan-wook shot all six episodes, with Pugh as a young stage actress recruited by Israeli intelligence to play a part inside a bombing network.

Pugh played which real professional wrestler in Fighting with My Family?

Paige: born Saraya Bevis, she took her ring name from Paige Matthews in the TV series Charmed, a character whose chin, she said, looked just like her own.

Who wrote and directed Fighting with My Family, the 2019 comedy-drama starring Pugh as a wrestler?

Stephen Merchant: his script turned a 2012 Channel 4 documentary about a wrestling family into a comedy-drama that premiered at Sundance in January 2019.

Fighting with My Family is set in which English city, the wrestling family's home town?

Norwich: the real family runs a wrestling promotion in the city, and in the film the heroine comes close to quitting WWE to go home and help train its recruits.

Which WWE star produced Fighting with My Family and plays himself in it?

Dwayne Johnson: on screen he gives the siblings a backstage pep talk, but in reality he first came across the family in a 2012 TV documentary and then set the film up.

Who wrote and directed Midsommar?

Ari Aster: producers pitched him a straight slasher among Swedish cultists, and he found his way in only by turning it into what he called a big operatic breakup movie.

What is the name of Pugh's grieving character in Midsommar?

Dani Ardor: mourning her family, she tags along with a wavering boyfriend to a Swedish commune, and the story ends with her choosing him as its final sacrifice.

Midsommar was mostly shot in which country, standing in for Sweden?

Hungary: money decided it, along with Swedish rules capping a filming day at eight hours, so the countryside around Budapest stood in for rural Hälsingland.

In Midsommar, what do Hårga elders do at 72?

Leap from a cliff: the ritual, an ättestupa, is the visitors' first real shock at a midsummer festival that the commune says comes round only once every 90 years.

Which title does Pugh's character win in a dancing contest in Midsommar?

May Queen: the title carries a grim duty, since the winner must choose who becomes the last of the commune's nine sacrifices.

Which institution reportedly paid $65,000 for Pugh's Midsommar flower dress?

The Academy Museum: the Oscars body outbid the fans after Ariana Grande and Halsey had both talked of bidding, and the money went to a foundation for New York firefighters during the pandemic.

Which of the March sisters did Pugh play in Little Women (2019)?

Amy: Pugh took the youngest sister from a schoolgirl of 12 to a grown woman, and the performance earned her a first Oscar nomination.

Who directed the 2019 adaptation of Little Women?

Greta Gerwig: for only her second film as solo director, after Lady Bird, she broke up the story's order, cutting between the sisters' girlhood and their adult lives.

Pugh's Oscar nomination for Little Women was in which category?

Best Supporting Actress: she lost to Laura Dern, her on-screen mother in Little Women, who won that night for a different film, Marriage Story.

In Little Women, Pugh's jealous character burns what belonging to Jo?

Her unpublished novel: left behind on a night at the theatre, she feeds the manuscript to the fire, then falls through the ice next morning while chasing Jo to make peace.

Little Women (2019) is the seventh film adaptation of a novel by which author?

Louisa May Alcott: her 1868 novel had already reached cinemas six times, and this script drew on her other writings as well as the book.

Which Marvel character does Pugh play in Black Widow, Hawkeye and Thunderbolts*?

Yelena Belova: the trained assassin's childhood football team supplies the name of the misfit squad in Thunderbolts*.

Pugh insisted on performing a jump from the top of which skyscraper herself for Thunderbolts*?

Merdeka 118: Marvel baulked on insurance grounds until she took her case all the way to studio chief Kevin Feige, and she made the leap in Kuala Lumpur without a stunt double.

Who directed Don't Worry Darling, with whom Pugh allegedly clashed during filming?

Olivia Wilde: reports of a rift between star and director grew when Pugh did almost no promotion for the film ahead of its Venice premiere.

What is the name of the idyllic 1950s company town in Don't Worry Darling?

Victory: the sunlit desert town turns out to be a computer simulation, which the husbands leave each morning to work real jobs while most of their wives know nothing of it.

Which pop star co-starred with Pugh in Don't Worry Darling?

Harry Styles: he joined in September 2020 as a late replacement for Shia LaBeouf, whose exit after production had begun was told in two conflicting versions.

In The Wonder, Pugh's English nurse is sent to which country in 1862 to watch over a 'fasting girl'?

Ireland: the village is still scarred by the Great Famine, so its people distrust the English nurse sent to learn whether the girl is truly living without food.

Pugh voiced which fairy-tale character in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish?

Goldilocks: far from a lost little girl, she is the adopted leader of the Three Bears crime family, racing Puss to a magic wish.

Which 2023 film, in which she plays a car crash survivor, marked Pugh's first producing venture?

A Good Person: she insisted on cutting off her own hair for the part instead of wearing a wig, and wrote and sang two songs for the soundtrack.

Which real figure did Pugh play in Christopher Nolan's 2023 biopic of a physicist?

Jean Tatlock: a psychiatrist and Communist Party member, she was the physicist's lover, and the affair was later held against him when his security clearance came under attack.

Which title replaced Thunderbolts* on Marvel's posters days after its 2025 release, explaining the asterisk?

The New Avengers: a scheming CIA director unveils the misfit team to the press under that name in the final scene, so the credits swap the title and cinema posters were changed to match.

Pugh plays which character in Dune: Part Two?

Princess Irulan: the emperor's daughter opens the film through her journal and ends it agreeing to a political marriage with Paul Atreides to save her father's life.

Pugh shaved her head for which 2024 romantic drama opposite Andrew Garfield?

We Live in Time: she had her head shaved for real to play a woman facing cancer, in a love story the film tells out of chronological order.

In her 2024 romance with Andrew Garfield, Pugh plays Almut, a former figure skater turned what?

Chef: Almut trains in secret for the Bocuse d'Or cooking contest during her cancer treatment, wanting her daughter to remember someone who did not give up.

Where does Pugh's character Almut give birth to her daughter in her 2024 romance with Andrew Garfield?

A petrol station bathroom: sent home from hospital on New Year's Eve for not being far enough along, the couple hit a traffic jam on the way back and never make it.

Pugh was cast in 2022 as Cathy Ames in a limited series adapting which Steinbeck novel?

East of Eden: the Netflix series was written by Zoe Kazan, whose grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 film version that gave James Dean his first major role.

A sheer pink gown Pugh wore at a 2022 show by which fashion house drew online backlash?

Valentino: Pugh and designer Pierpaolo Piccioli had chosen to take out the dress's lining, and she answered the online abuse with a long Instagram post defending her body.

Pugh dated which American actor-director, about two decades her senior, from 2019 to 2022?

Zach Braff: they met when he directed her in the short film In the Time It Takes to Get There, and she spoke out more than once against strangers' comments on the age gap.

Under what name did Pugh's cover songs appear on YouTube from 2013 to 2016?

Flossie Rose: her mother began uploading home videos of her singing covers, Oasis among them, without quite realising that anyone could watch, and they found a following.

Pugh has spoken publicly about having endometriosis and which other condition?

Polycystic ovary syndrome: she said the twin diagnosis at 27 led her to freeze her eggs, and she has pressed for young women to be taught about both conditions.

At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, Pugh received which prize for emerging talent?

The Trophée Chopard: past winners including Marion Cotillard and Léa Seydoux sat on the jury that picked her, and Zhang Ziyi handed out that year's trophies as the prize's godmother.

In a 2022 Empire readers' poll, Pugh was voted one of the 50 greatest what of all time?

Actors: Empire put her place down to the grounded empathy she brings to her characters, setting the 26-year-old on a readers' list beside Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.

Pugh won a SAG Award as part of the cast of which film?

Oppenheimer: the win had an irony to it, since the same union's strike had sent the cast out of the film's London premiere before the screening the previous summer.

Who plays Red Guardian, the father figure to Pugh's character in Black Widow and Thunderbolts*?

David Harbour: his boastful Soviet super-soldier, an answer to Captain America, was only ever a pretend father to her, yet the two end up fighting side by side.