Florence Pugh was once told to lose weight for a role

Florence Pugh has revealed she was once told to lose weight and ‘change her appearance’ for a role.

The 27-year-old British star, who recently showed off her newly shaved head, reflected on the comments during a new interview with Time magazine for its Next Generation Leaders edition.

Pugh spoke about playing WWE star Paige in the 2019 biographical comedy Fighting with my Family, alongside Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson.

The Midsommar star told the publication that she was happy with the role and how she looked in it, particularly as it had come after she had been encouraged to lose weight for a role.

“The person I came back to was a female wrestler with muscles and big thighs who made her own name as a champion,” she said.

“I quite liked that because the last time I’d been there I was told I needed to lose weight – it was just so not the person I wanted to be.”

Pugh has previously said that she felt she’d made a ‘massive mistake’ after moving from the UK to Hollywood to launch her career.

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In an interview with the Telegraph last year, Pugh said she snagged the role of a pop star in a TV pilot when she was just 19 - but that bosses had tried to push her into changing her appearance.

She said: “All the things that they were trying to change about me – whether it was my weight, my look, the shape of my face, the shape of my eyebrows – that was so not what I wanted to do, or the industry I wanted to work in.

“I’d thought the film business would be like [my experience of making] The Falling, but actually, this was what the top of the game looked like, and I felt I’d made a massive mistake.”

Ultimately, the pilot didn’t get picked and Pugh decided to move back to England and won the role of Lady Macbeth in the 2016 movie of the same name.

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This job reminded Pugh how much she enjoyed the industry or - as she put it - ‘made me fall back in love with cinema’.

“The kind of cinema that was a space where you could be opinionated, and loud, and I’ve stuck by that,” she continued.

“I think it’s far too easy for people in this industry to push you left and right.

“And I was lucky enough to discover when I was 19 what kind of a performer I wanted to be.”