Florence Pugh

In Thunderbolts\* (2025), Yelena Belova goes to work with a flat voice and shoulders that seem to have had enough already. Pugh makes the boredom funny without making the woman pleased with herself, and lets grief account for the heaviness. We found that weariness unexpectedly moving; she makes getting through the job look like effort enough. The fights are ordinary and the opening dawdles, but she gives us a reason to stay.

The early breakthrough was Lady Macbeth (2016), with Pugh in the lead as Katherine Lester. Ari Aster's Midsommar (2019) required sustained intensity from her Dani Ardor. Little Women (2019) gave her comedy as well as drama as Amy March. The move into franchise work came with Yelena in Black Widow (2021). That film introduced her without quite knowing what to do with her; Thunderbolts\* gives the same character boredom, humour and room to hurt.

We Live in Time (2024) makes the strengths and the limits of that resourcefulness clear. As Almut, a chef, Pugh is quick and unsentimental opposite Andrew Garfield, especially when an argument about children exposes assumptions neither character has questioned. John Crowley gets convincing friction from the pair, but the shuffled chronology keeps interrupting them. Editor Justine Wright moves us between years, and the structure too often breaks off a feeling just as it takes hold. Pugh can make Almut difficult and believable; she cannot make the story less ordinary.

The smaller parts are too often frustrating. Even a film as good as Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (2023) leaves her Jean Tatlock with a handful of scenes and little chance to become someone we understand. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026), she merely passes through. Thunderbolts\* is the useful starting point, with some patience for its opening and the people it assumes we already know.