Florence Pugh Acting Advice

Well, my first ever job was The Falling, and it was a completely freakish way to get in the industry. There was this blanket audition that was going between Oxford and London, because they were shooting in an old school in Oxfordshire. And they needed to fill the school with, essentially, girls. They needed as many girls as possible, because it was about a school drama. You can see they said, you, girl, go in there. Yeah, go in that school. And so they sent this audition around, and everyone was talking about it for a month. And I'd been watching my brother in this industry, and, you know, the auditions, and how you rarely ever get a call back, and usually they give it to some big A-lister. And I remember thinking, like, this isn't how it works, and I'd been watching my brother, and I know how it works, and there's no point in me handing in that tape. And on the last day that it was supposed to be handed in, I remember my mum saying, did you do that tape? And I was like, what? You know more than anyone that, like, that's not how this works. You've been through it. They cast some famous person after everyone sent in their tapes. We all know this. And she was like, no, no, no, I know you're not going to get it, but you should do the tape, because nobody's going to see it. And she was like, but, you know, you want to do this one day, so you may as well just give it a go. So we gave it a go, and I had, like, dirty hair and a sweaty moustache, and I sent in the tape. And then come Monday, I got an email to say that the director wanted to meet me. And it was just one of those flukish, right time, right place. Don't Believe the Hype is a big one that I get all the time. And I understand why it's told all the time, because I think people are very scared of what happens to people when they've been in this industry, and they've been in Hollywood, and they've been pulled and tugged from all directions. And I think it's happened enough for people to realise that they need to warn everyone. So I'm trying to live by those two. And, of course, my dad's favourite one is Smell the Roses, so I do that. I remember I got told to keep on living my life, which may sound really simple, but it's actually not. I think when you're bouncing around all the time, your main focus, your main priority, like everyone, when it's going well, is to just keep on going and to keep on doing the thing that you've been doing. And I remember someone saying, don't forget to live your life. And I was like, oh, I can see how you can suddenly wake up and be like, oh, my goodness, I've just been doing this for ten years, and my other bit has been quiet since I was 18 or something. So I take that on. A myth that I've heard a few times when they're like, but don't you get to hang out in your trailer all the time? You get to change in your trailer, and you get to put your old clothes on from that morning in your trailer, and the rest of the time you're running around trying to help make the movie. I loved normal faces and expressions and the way that faces moved. And I just always remember being attracted to women that were hysterical, and then they weren't, and then they were clever, and then they made a normal face that humans made. And I think I've always been attracted to the dirt of acting, like the realness of no, it's not acting. How would you react in that moment? How would faces move in that moment?