Florence Pugh

Pugh at the 2014 BFI London Film Festival, where she was nominated for two awards

While still in school, Pugh made her professional acting debut in the mystery drama The Falling (2014), in which she played a precocious teenager opposite Maisie Williams.[6][11] Tara Brady of The Irish Times called her "remarkable" and Mike McCahill of The Daily Telegraph stated she conveyed her character's "teen-queen bearing with the vulnerability of one still unsure of her own body".[12][13] In the same year, Pugh was nominated for Best British Newcomer at the BFI London Film Festival and for Best Young British/Irish performer by the London Film Critics' Circle.[14]

Pugh made her American television debut in the Fox's pilot Studio City, co-starring Eric McCormack, in 2015.[6][15] The following year, she starred in the independent drama Lady Macbeth and had a recurring role as a webcam model in the first season of the ITV detective series Marcella.[16] In the former, based on the novella Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District by Nikolai Leskov, she played a young woman unhappily married to a much older man. Reviewing the film for Variety, Guy Lodge called Pugh "a major talent to watch" and commended her portrayal of her character's "complex, under-the-skin transformation".[17] For her performance, she won the BIFA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a British Independent Film, among others.[18]

In 2018, Pugh made a small appearance in the action film The Commuter and played Cordelia to Anthony Hopkins' Leir of Britain in Richard Eyre's television film King Lear.[19] Later that year, she portrayed Elizabeth de Burgh in the Netflix historical film Outlaw King (2018), co-starring Chris Pine as Robert the Bruce. Charles Bramesco of The Guardian found her to be "excellent despite her thankless role".[20] 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 in the 1970s who becomes embroiled in an espionage plot.[21][22] While divided on the series overall, Richard Lawson of Vanity Fair credited Pugh for being "terrific throughout, once again asserting her star-on-the-rise status" and added that she "smartly mixes earthiness with sophistication, wisdom with naïveté."[23] She also appeared alongside Emilia Clarke, Tom Hiddleston and Gemma Chan in the short film Leading Lady Parts in support of the Time's Up initiative.[24]

Pugh at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con promoting Black Widow (2021)

Pugh was included on Forbes' annual 30 Under 30 list, which recognises the 30 most influential people in Europe under age 30, in 2019.[25] She was also recognised as having a breakthrough in the same year, during which she starred in three major films.[26][27] She first starred as professional wrestler Paige in Fighting with My Family, a comedy-drama about Paige's relationship with her family, co-starring Lena Headey and Dwayne Johnson.[28] The film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival to positive reviews.[29][30] Geoffrey Macnab of The Independent took note of how different the role was from Pugh's previous works and credited her for being "completely convincing as the wrestler", adding that she showed "the same defiance, scruffy glamour and self-deprecating humour as the real life [...] Paige."[31] At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, she was awarded the Trophée Chopard, which is given by a jury of professionals to young actors to recognise and encourage their careers.[32] She next headlined Ari Aster's horror film Midsommar, which chronicles a troubled couple who encounter Swedish cultists. David Edelstein of Vulture commended Pugh's "amazingly vivid" performance and remarked that her face was "so wide and open that she seems to have nowhere to hide her emotions."[33]

In her final film release of 2019, Pugh played Amy March, a headstrong artist, in Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women.[34] The cast rehearsed the script for two weeks prior to filming, but Pugh was unable to participate as she was filming Midsommar at that point. She believed this helped create distance between her and the co-stars playing her sisters, which proved conducive for maintaining her character's persona.[35] Highlighting her performance, David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote that she "continues to prove herself a distinctive talent, managing all the tricky contradictions of [her] role with disarming grace, humour and a wilful streak that grows almost imperceptibly into wisdom."[36] The film received critical acclaim and grossed over $216 million against its $40 million budget.[37][38] Pugh earned nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role and the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance.[39][40]

Pugh will next star opposite Scarlett Johansson in the superhero film Black Widow as Yelena Belova, a spy,[41][42] and will reprise the role in the Disney+ series Hawkeye.[43] She will also star in Don't Worry Darling, a thriller set in 1950s California, opposite Harry Styles and directed by Olivia Wilde.[44]