Florence Pugh has revealed that she has had to work hard at “protecting” herself and her mental health while taking on more emotionally taxing roles.
The We Live In Time star was recently a guest on the podcast Reign With Josh Smith where she reflected on her 10-year career in the film industry.
During the interview, the Oscar nominee shared: “Protecting myself is something that I’ve had to learn how to do. There have been some roles that I’ve given too much to, and I’ve been broken for a long while afterwards.”
Specifically naming the epic folk horror Midsommar as one example of this, Florence continued: “I definitely felt like I abused myself in a way in the places that I got myself to.
“The nature of figuring these things out is you need to go, ‘all right, well I can’t do that again cause that was too much’.”
However, she also insisted that when she looks at her performance in the Ari Aster break-up movie that she feels “really proud of what I did” and “what came out of me, so I don’t regret it”.
Florence shared the screen with Jack Reynor in the polarising 2019 movie, in which they played Dani and Christian, a young couple on the verge of splitting up whose lives are turned upside down when they travel to a remote Swedish community to celebrate the midsommar festival.
Last year, the British performer admitted she and director Ari had very different takes on the film’s final moments, in which Dani is seen smiling at the audience despite all of the horrors she’s witnessed (and, indeed, partaken in).
“I have a different version [of events] to Ari,” she claimed, before explaining exactly how she interprets Dani’s final moments of the movie.
Midsommar is available to stream on Amazon Prime, while We Live In Time is in cinemas now. Listen to Florence Pugh’s full interview on Reign With Josh Smith.