Rachel Syme meets Florence Pugh, star of the acclaimed and terrifying Midsommar.
On a recent summer evening, the 23-year-old actress Florence Pugh stood in front of a packed cinema in Brooklyn, New York, in a floral maxi-dress and a pair of shiny black work boots. It was not until Pugh opened her mouth that it became clear she was nervous.
She was there to introduce Midsommar, the new horror from Hereditary director Ari Aster about a pagan death cult in Sweden.
Pugh stars as a depressive young woman who loses her entire family (in a manner so horrifying that the images may stalk your nightmares) and then agrees to accompany her emotionally distant boyfriend and his buddies on a trip to rural Scandinavia.
They travel to the remote hometown of their affable Swedish friend Pelle, who invites them to participate in a sacred nine-day ritual celebrating the summer solstice. It soon becomes clear that Pelle is not who he seems, and that the community is hiding sinister secrets. The film steers quickly from bucolic frolicking into abject terror and leaves you feeling queasy and disoriented by a smorgasbord of blood, agony and grisly bear intestines.
Pugh, having seen the film for the first time the previous day, seemed a bit shell-shocked as she spoke to the crowd. She told the audience to brace themselves. "Good luck!" she chirped, in her husky Oxfordshire accent, before giving an encouraging little wave and clomping out of the theatre.
Sitting with Pugh the day before, I understand why she's so anxious for people to see Midsommar. It's not just that the film is scary – though you will need nerves of steel to get through it – but that it marks risky new terrain for Pugh. Never before has she been so raw in a role. In the first few minutes on screen, she churns through a kaleidoscope of feeling: from worry, to guilt, to neediness, to searing loss, to numbness, all with a bare face and dirty hair. It is a lot for one actor to carry.
"I feel like the horror lies more in watching people's pain, rather than gore or jump scares or anything like that," says Pugh. "Dealing with grief and trauma is scary, because no one really knows what vocabulary you should use. And so to watch characters break down, for me, was the hardest thing to do."
She has the ideal face for conveying extreme emotion: wide and guileless, like a blank canvas stretched across a frame. Pugh has never had any formal acting training – she landed her first film, The Calling, right out of secondary school. She got the theatrical bug early, via school plays. She struggled academically, but her father encouraged her to focus on her goal of becoming an actress and not sweat her exams.
She realises now that this was atypical parenting. "My dad was like, 'Look, if you can't do [something], and you don't like it, then don't stress about it.' I'd constantly have this reminder that I've got really kind parents that don't mind if I'm not fantastic at everything."
After The Calling she was cast in a Hollywood television drama called Studio City in 2015, when she was only 18. The show never made it past the pilot, which Pugh now sees as a blessing in disguise. While she was in Los Angeles, she says, the media began to construct a narrative around her body: pointing out that she wasn't rail-thin. It left her with a sour taste about what the industry does to young performers.
"I think I was supposed to be feeling really grateful and really appreciative, which I was," she says. "But the treatment of me and weight and body image was not good at all. Hollywood knows exactly what to do with everyone. I think because I was so available and eager, that was the problem – when you don't know who you are yet."
Pugh returned to England, in need of a "new lease of love for the film industry". She found it in Lady Macbeth, the 2016 independent film about a young Victorian wife trapped in a terrible marriage, who poisons her husband and becomes a serial murderess - even killing a horse. The role – violent, unhinged, brutal – showed Pugh had the ability to play off even the harshest moments with sensitivity and depth.
More roles followed and last year Pugh returned to Hollywood to play a wrestler in Stephen Merchant's Fighting with My Family. It was a comic role – a first for Pugh – but also a swaggering one; she got to have jet black hair and ripped muscles, and take people down on the mat.
Now, she's back working in America in a way that feels healthy and exciting. She's no longer an ingenue who people can bend to fit their own story, but one of the most in-demand actresses of her generation.
"I think when you're out of work there, it's horrible. Everybody's busy, and everybody's got a job but you. That's not a nice feeling. But when you can relax and know that you're done, that's nice."
After Midsommar, Pugh will appear in Greta Gerwig's anticipated new Little Women adaptation, before rocketing into the Marvel universe to star opposite Scarlett Johansson in the Black Widow film.
When I ask Pugh if she is drawn to "strong" female characters – she's played murderers, spies, athletes, and a woman out for revenge – she baulks at the term. She says, strength is not a prerequisite. What she craves in a character is complexity.
"It doesn't matter if she's kind, or a bitch, or she kills a kid," she says of the roles she takes on. "As long as she's saying something. And I don't even mean verbally. If you were to watch her silhouette, what have you taken away from her?
"But it's never been about being a strong woman," she goes on. "Because as we've realised in the past two years, what does that mean? No one's strong. Everyone has their flaws and insecurities. That is what makes people human, and that is what makes people empowered. When they see people that have problems or flaws or cracks. That's the thing that makes someone go, 'Okay, I can do this now. I can be this, because it's not so alien any more'."
LOWDOWN
Who: Florence Pugh
What: Midsommar, the new horror from the director of Hereditary.
When: Playing at the Film Festival on Sunday.
OPINION: This was no random triple course of overture, concerto and symphony.