Hollywood is riddled with unrealistic beauty standards. In an interview, the Little Women actress, Florence Pugh, shared how she was told to undergo a physical transformation.

In 2023, during an interview with Time magazine, the Dune star shared her experience when an executive allegedly asked her to lose weight. The discussion arose when Pugh got a role, playing a WWE wrestler in the 2019  biographical sports comedy-drama, Fighting With My Family.

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

But unfortunately, this wasn't the only time the actress faced such criticism surrounding her weight. In 2022, the Oscar nominee revealed that when she was 19-years-old, a studio executive had asked her to change her appearance after she landed a role of a pop star in a TV pilot.

"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," Pugh shared.

But Pugh did not comply. It helped her to explore a lot about herself and the performer she wanted to become. Doubting her decision to follow a career on screen after the TV pilot failed to pick up, Pugh returned to England.

Life took a new turn as she eventually landed the role in Lady Macbeth and fell in love with the genre. Pugh even praised director Carol Morley, with whom she worked on The Falling, for allowing her to embrace her natural self. That lesson stuck with her.

“I don’t mind my double chins," Pugh said.

Instead of working on reaching the beauty standards, Pugh now focuses on her acting skills.

Florence Pugh Isn’t the Only One to Go Through the Experience

Jennifer Lawrence revealed she was asked to shed 10 pounds while working on the YA film series she led from 2012 to 2015. Speaking with Viola Davis on Variety Actors on Actors, she shared that the request came while portraying Katniss Everdeen.

 "I remember the biggest conversation was, ‘How much weight are you going to lose?'” Lawrence shared in an interview in 2022.

But like Pugh, even she denied fitting into the beauty standards.

“I’m never going to starve myself for a part,” Lawrence said. “I don’t want little girls to be like, ‘Oh, I want to look like Katniss, so I’m going to skip dinner.’"

In a piece for HuffPost, Jennifer Aniston recalled being told by her agent that losing weight was key to finding fame in Hollywood. Like Pugh and Lawrence, she refused to undergo a transformation.

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Written by

Ruwa Javed

Edited by

Soheli Tarafdar