Florence Pugh on Her ‘Painful’ Body Comments and Weight Shaming

Florence Pugh exploded on the scene in 2019 with a breakout role as Amy March in Little Women. Since then, she’s starred in huge movies like Hawkeye, Don’t Worry, Darling, and Oppenheimer. But, unfortunately, comments about her body and confidence followed. Now, the 28-year-old actor is speaking out about how those comments have impacted her.

Pugh told British Vogue in a new interview on Wednesday that she’s struggled with all the commentary about her body, including the scrutiny of her nipples in 2022 after she wore a sheer Valentino dress. “It’s so hard,” she said in the interview. “[The internet’s] a very mean place. It’s really painful to read people being nasty about my confidence or nasty about my weight.”

The Dune 2 star said that the commentary “never feels good.” But Pugh also said that it’s important for her to be authentic. “The one thing I always wanted to achieve was to never sell someone else, something that isn’t the real me,” she said.

Pugh also addressed criticism that she’s too confident. “I don’t think it’s confidence in hoping people like me. I think it’s just, like, I don’t want to be anyone else,” she said in the interview, making it clear she’s not trying to be anything other than who she is. “I’m not a model,” said Pugh. But she also noted that she needs to do photo shoots as part of her job. “It’s portraying a completely different version of myself that I don’t necessarily believe in,” she said. “You have to believe that you deserve to be in those pages being beautiful. But now I know what I want to show. I know who I want to show.”

This is hardly Pugh’s first time clapping back at criticism. In 2022, she shared a lengthy post on Instagram, going on the offensive after receiving criticism for going braless under that see-through Valentino dress. “So many of you wanted to aggressively let me know how disappointed you were by my ‘tiny tits,’ or how I should be embarrassed by being so ‘flat chested,’” she wrote in the Instagram caption. “I’ve lived in my body for a long time. I’m fully aware of my breast size and am not scared of it.”

She ended that post on this note: “Grow up. Respect people. Respect bodies. Respect all women. Respect humans. Life will get a whole lot easier, I promise.”

Pugh also had this to say in her interview with British Vogue: “I know who I want to be and I know what I look like. There’s no insecurities about what I am anymore.”