Emma Kiely is here to predict another young star ready to take the acting world by storm.There’s always a constant stream of new faces on your screens from all over the world. Pretty, constantly smiling faces yearning for a chance in Hollywood. Despite being in this ever-growing sea of young talent, there’s something about twenty-three-year-old Florence Pugh from Oxford. She stands out with her strong facial features and a voice that would give Sir Ian McKellen a run for his money, even when in the company of some of the industry’s finest.
“She stands out with her strong facial features and a voice that would give Ian McKellan a run for his money’’
Pugh first drew my attention when she starred as the thieving webcam girl in the first season of Marcella. Her ease throughout her se scenes and strength in character as a young girl who has been navigating her way through London on her own made for a perfect accessory to an ongoing murder case. Pugh then joined the stellar cast of BBC’s 2018 adaptation King Lear as Cordelia, opposite Sir Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson and Jim Broadbent, to name a few. You would think that a young actress would be swallowed by the colossal talent of her co-stars but that couldn’t be further from the truth. She perfectly enveloped the character of Cordelia with her strong-willed, head-up demeanor coinciding with her delicate love and devotion to her father, and she and Hopkins were a perfect match. You can now see Pugh in the BBC adaptation of John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl. Her scenes with Michael Shannon and Alexander Skarsgård are full of intense chemistry and because of her outstanding features and her electric presence, you can’t keep your eyes off her.
“Watching her, you can’t help but be reminded of Kate Winslet in her more recent years’’
Watching her, you can’t help but be reminded of Kate Winslet in her more recent years. A radiating presence but with an understated, cool demeanor. Yet, only in her early twenties she’s able to capture the maturity of an experienced actress in her late thirties and her acting feels light-years ahead of Winslet’s in Titanic, despite being the same age. She is set to star opposite Meryl Streep, Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan in Greta Gerwig’s Little Women next year which will, no doubt, catapult her to worldwide recognition.