Florence Pugh

Florence Pugh (/pjuː/ PEW; born 3 January 1996) is an English actress. Her accolades include a British Independent Film Award, in addition to nominations for an Academy Award and three BAFTA Awards.

After making her acting debut in the drama film The Falling (2014), Pugh gained praise for starring in the independent drama Lady Macbeth (2016) and the miniseries The Little Drummer Girl (2018). Her international breakthrough came in 2019 with her portrayals of professional wrestler Paige in the sports film Fighting with My Family, a despondent American woman in the horror film Midsommar, and Amy March in the period drama Little Women. For the last of these, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Pugh has played Yelena Belova in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring in the films Black Widow (2021) and Thunderbolts* (2025), as well as the Disney+ miniseries Hawkeye (2021). In her highest-grossing releases, she voiced Goldilocks in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022), and portrayed Jean Tatlock in Oppenheimer (2023) and Princess Irulan in Dune: Part Two (2024); she also continued to gain praise for her performances in dramas such as We Live in Time (2024).

Florence Pugh was born on 3 January 1996 in Oxford to dancer Deborah and restaurateur Clinton Pugh. She has three siblings: actor and musician Toby Sebastian, actress Arabella Gibbins, and Rafaela "Raffie" Pugh. She suffered from tracheomalacia (a windpipe condition causing breathing problems) as a child, which led to frequent hospitalisations. The family relocated to Manilva in Spain when Pugh was three years old, hoping the warmer weather would improve her health. They lived there until she was six, when they moved back to Oxford.

She was privately educated at Wychwood School and St Edward's School, Oxford, but disliked how the schools did not support her acting ambitions.

While still studying in sixth form, Pugh made her professional acting debut in the 2014 drama, The Falling, playing a precocious teenager opposite Maisie Williams. Tara Brady of The Irish Times deemed Pugh "remarkable", while IndieWire's Oliver Lyttelton called her "striking". In the same year, Pugh was nominated for Best British Newcomer at the BFI London Film Festival as well as for Young British / Irish Performer of the Year by the London Film Critics' Circle. The next year, she was cast as a singer-songwriter in the dramedy pilot Studio City, co-starring Eric McCormack as the character's father. The pilot was not picked up to series. Pugh later characterised her experience on Studio City negatively due to pressures to change her appearance.

In 2016, Pugh starred in the independent drama Lady Macbeth, a film based on Nikolai Leskov's novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, and appeared in the first series of the ITV detective series Marcella. In the former, she played Katherine, an unhappily married bride who grows violent. Pugh attributed her attraction to the part to her partiality to characters with "confusing or at least interesting" motivations. The role earned her acclaim. She also credited the production with reviving her interest in cinema after being dispirited by Studio City. Reviewing the film for Variety, Guy Lodge commended her portrayal of the character's "complex, under-the-skin transformation". She won the BIFA for Best Performance by an Actress in a British Independent Film for the role.

In 2018, Pugh was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award at the 71st British Academy Film Awards. She then played Cordelia to Anthony Hopkins's titular King Lear in Richard Eyre's television film King Lear and appeared in the short film Leading Lady Parts in support of the Time's Up initiative. Later that year, Pugh portrayed Elizabeth de Burgh in the Netflix historical film Outlaw King, co-starring Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce. Charles Bramesco of The Guardian found her to be "excellent despite her thankless role". She next starred in a six-part miniseries adaptation of John le Carré's spy novel The Little Drummer Girl, in which she played an actress who becomes embroiled in an espionage plot. Her performance was met with praise. While divided on the series overall, Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair called Pugh "terrific throughout" and added that she "smartly mixes earthiness with sophistication, wisdom with naïveté."