Florence Pugh said shooting wrestling scenes with Jack Lowden in her new film was “havoc” and she ended up with bruises.
The British actress, 23, plays WWE champion Paige in Fighting With My Family, directed by Stephen Merchant, which hit the big screen yesterday.
Pugh revealed that the role required intense training — including CrossFit — and a lot of on-set wrestling, despite having stunt doubles for the heavy fights.
Of the filming, Pugh laughed: “It was a pretty havoc shoot, we didn’t have that much time. And you’d always come home with a new bruise, especially as Jack and I would love wrestling each other.”
But she said she drew the line at wrestling another co-star, Dwayne Johnson. “He is really big and he eats all the time,” she added.
Pugh also said that she feels a “responsibility to be honest” on her social media channels and not “edit her life”, wanting to show how “normal” her life is online as she fears depression in the social media generation is fuelled by the Internet.
She said: “You are hugely responsible for people following you. You need to work out why you are posting, what the message is and what you are doing to these people.
“For me, it’s always been so obvious that the less we can edit our lives and more we show how normal we all are, the better.”
Pugh said that she has watched her younger sister – who is seven years her junior – “grow up on Instagram and Snapchat” and believes that depression in the younger generation is enhanced by Internet use.
“I think it’s good to not edit your life too much or you give people different standards,” Pugh said.
“You’ve got a lot of people looking and your life and a lot of people thinking that’s normal and, ultimately, that’s why there is a lot of depression in young kids because they are growing up with these ‘perfect’ worlds on their phones and realising that is not the way that their life is.
“In order for us to appreciate this world we have to be a bit more honest and I hope I do that.”
Fighting With My Family is in cinemas now
