Florence Pugh admits she 'most definitely abused' herself for Midsommar role

Florence Pugh has admitted she "most definitely abused" herself to get into the mindset of her Midsommar character.

In Ari Aster's 2019 folk horror, Pugh played Dani, a student traumatised by the death of her sister and parents in a murder-suicide. She breaks down when she joins her toxic boyfriend on a trip to Sweden, where they find themselves in the clutches of a sinister cult.

During a recent appearance on the Off Menu with Ed Gamble and James Acaster podcast, the British actress admitted she abused herself in order to portray such a tortured character.

"I'd never played someone that was in that much pain before, and I would put myself in really s**tty situations that maybe other actors don't need to do but I would just be imagining the worst things," she revealed. "Each day the content would be getting more weird and harder to do. I was putting things in my head that were getting worse and more bleak. I think by the end I probably, most definitely abused my own self in order to get that performance."

After she finished shooting Midsommar, Pugh had to travel immediately to Boston to film Greta Gerwig's Little Women. However, she struggled to let Dani go and felt "immense guilt" leaving her character in the commune.

"I remember looking (out the plane) and feeling immense guilt because I felt like I'd left (Dani) in that field in that state," Pugh recounted. "It's so weird. I've never had that before... Obviously, that's probably a psychological thing where I felt immense guilt of what I'd put myself through but I definitely felt like I'd left her there in that field to be abused... almost like I'd created this person and then I just left her there to go and do another movie."

Pugh experienced her career breakthrough in 2019 thanks to Midsommar, Fighting with My Family and Little Women, for which she received an Oscar nomination.