Florence Pugh Addresses "Nasty" Comments About Her Weight

Florence Pugh isn’t immune to criticism about her appearance. 

The Don't Worry Darling actress, 28, opened up about the difficulty of pushing through outside commentary about how she looks and said she finds dealing with such chatter to be "so hard."

"[The internet’s] a very mean place," Pugh told British Vogue in an interview published Sept. 18. "It’s really painful to read people being nasty about my confidence or nasty about my weight. It never feels good."

As she pushes against unrealistic and outdated beauty standards, the Dune star's main goal is simply to always be authentically herself.

"The one thing I always wanted to achieve was to never sell someone else, something that isn’t the real me," she continued. "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."

The Oscar nominee added that photo shoots are "a muscle" she's "learnt to be all right at," but she still struggles with what glossy magazine photos might project about her to the world.

"I’m not a model. It’s portraying a completely different version of myself that I don’t necessarily believe in," Pugh explained. "You have to believe that you deserve to be in those pages being beautiful."

She went on, "But now I know what I want to show. I know who I want to show. I know who I want to be and I know what I look like. There’s no insecurities about what I am anymore."

Pugh added that her desire to be authentic and real also applies to how she approaches her acting career.

"I sometimes prefer it," she said of "acting in pain" on screen. "That’s always the most important thing, whatever I do. I feel like it’s my duty to play human and ugly, to translate what looks real and what feels painful – whether that’s an ugly cry or a face that doesn’t settle or a stomach that sits [isn’t held in] when you’re naked."

This isn't the first time that Pugh has weighed in on critics of her looks. A sheer Valentino dress she wore in 2022 sparked controversy online, the Little Women actress said that she would "much rather lay it all out" than try to "hide" her body at the risk of making anyone uncomfortable.

"When everything went down with the Valentino pink dress a year ago my nipples were on display through a piece of fabric, and it really wound people up," she told Elle UK last year. "It's the freedom that people are scared of; the fact I'm comfortable and happy."