Who is she?
A 21-year-old from Oxford who’s being talked up as ‘the next Kate Winslet’. In period drama ‘Lady Macbeth’, the soon-to-be-megastar plays a teenager who fights back after being married off. Spoiler alert: a killing spree is involved.
That doesn’t sound very genteel for a corset drama?
Quite. But this is ass-kicking in a corset. Pugh says the script made a change from all the ‘girlfriend roles’ that land in her inbox.
Haven’t I seen her somewhere before?
She made her film debut in the cult British indie drama ‘The Falling’ – cast after picking up a leaflet while studying for her A-levels.
What’s her take on the Kate Winslet comparisons?
Slightly embarrassed. But she’s a fan: ‘I love all of Kate Winslet’s characters. And Natalie Portman. If I can have a smidgen of what they’ve done that would be awesome.’
What’s next?
Right now, she’s in Norfolk making a biopic about the British wrestler Paige. Pugh stars in the film alongside Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson.
Has he been showing her the wrestling ropes?
Yes, she says: ‘There was one moment when I was in LA and he was teaching me a move. I just looked at him, thinking: “Oh my God, I’m being taught to wrestle by Dwayne Johnson. What the hell?”
‘Lady Macbeth’ is in UK cinemas Apr 28.
This brilliantly feminist British indie film plunges a cold, sharp knife into the back of bonnet dramas. ‘Lady Macbeth’ is like a Jane Austen story with a dash of sex and murder and a nineteenth-century heroine who might have swallowed the works of Caitlin Moran and Gloria Steinem.
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