The Essential
FLORENCE PUGH
KATHERINE LESTER
LADY MACBETH
(2016)
At 26, the youngest person you voted for in our Greatest Actors poll was great from the start. She excels in her first lead role: a teenage bride forced into a miserable marriage with a colliery magnate’s son, coming alive when she meets groomsman Sebastian (Cosmo Jarvis). Pugh delivers a subtle but provocative performance, hinting at a world of hidden passions. She also aces perhaps the most difficult test for any actor — aconvincing drunk scene.
DANI ARDOR
MIDSOMMAR
(2019)
It takes an actor of extraordinary skill and commitment to etch the journey of Midsommar’s Dani, but Pugh pulls it off effortlessly. She starts as a young woman downtrodden by tragedy and, after spending some time at a batshit Swedish festival, finds a feverish intensity that is the definition of go big or go home (cue stuffing your boyfriend in a disembowelled bear’s body and smiling as he goes up in flames).
Alamy
ELIZABETH WRIGHT THE WONDER (2022)
Pugh’s latest turn, as an English nurse summoned to an 1850s Irish village to help a victimised 11-year-old girl, is among her most electric performances. She grounds Sebastián Lelio’s postmodern period pic in authenticity, perfectly portraying a rationalist transformed by a growing protective feeling for her charge. Taking on an entire town, she delivers ferocious forthrightness mixed with touching sensitivity. In other words, the wonder of Pugh.
IAN
FREER