FLORENCE PUGH HAS A SPECIAL “SECRET” FOR GETTING INTO EVERY ROLE

Florence Pugh has long been regarded as one of the most versatile young actresses in British cinema. From the distraught young woman Dani in Midsommar, to the ambitious Amy March in Little Women, and the sharp yet deeply emotional Yelena Belova in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pugh rarely allows her characters to blend into one another. Behind the changes in appearance, voice, mannerisms and psychology lies one small detail audiences would hardly notice: each character has her own distinct scent.

In a conversation about perfume, Florence Pugh revealed that she often looks for a specific fragrance for the character she is preparing to play. What makes the process particularly interesting is that the scent does not necessarily have to be something she personally likes. In fact, Pugh may deliberately choose a fragrance she would never normally buy, as long as it feels right for the woman she is trying to become on screen. “I go and buy a perfume that is their smell, and there’ll be smells that I would never buy as me,” she explained.

For Pugh, perfume is therefore more than simply an accessory. It becomes a private marker that helps her distinguish Florence Pugh from the character before the cameras even begin rolling. If costumes transform her appearance, makeup alters her face and speech patterns change the way she sounds, fragrance works in a much quieter way, existing almost entirely within the actress’s own perception. Her audience does not need to smell it. As long as she can sense it herself, the fragrance can help her step into another world.

That is also why Pugh spends considerable time looking for the right perfume for each role. In recent interviews, she has explained that every character has a different fragrance and that discovering a character’s “smell” has become an important part of understanding who that person is. Sometimes she comes across a perfume in a small shop far from home; at other times, she finds one at a duty-free store. There is no fixed formula, but Pugh often relies on instinct and a simple question: what would this woman smell like?

The approach becomes even more intriguing when looking back at some of the most memorable characters of her career. Dani in Midsommar is a young woman carrying profound psychological trauma who becomes immersed in a strange community in Sweden. Amy March in Little Women belongs to an entirely different world, one in which personal ambition, art, marriage and social status are closely intertwined. Yelena Belova, meanwhile, is a trained assassin from Marvel who may appear tough and emotionally guarded but also possesses an unusually humorous and relatable personality. If Pugh truly creates a different “scent DNA” for each of them, it becomes another layer of characterisation that audiences can never directly experience.

This is particularly apparent with Little Women. Pugh once revealed that her mother even created a perfume specifically for Amy March. Because Amy is a character from the 19th century, simply choosing a modern perfume would not necessarily create the right atmosphere. Pugh’s mother therefore researched Amy’s lifestyle, the kinds of things she could have bought or traded during that period, as well as minerals and colours connected to the character’s work as an artist. From those details, a fragrance was created with a more delicate, mature floral quality. Pugh said the experience made her love Amy even more and helped her understand the character on a deeper level.

Pugh’s particular interest in scent did not actually begin with acting. She grew up with memories closely connected to her mother’s perfume. In an interview with ELLE, the actress recalled watching carefully how her mother applied fragrance, including where she sprayed it and how many times. As a child, before family dinners, her mother would often put a little perfume on her wrist. For Pugh, those memories became associated with growing up, femininity and confidence, emotions that later remained an important part of her relationship with fragrance.

Scent is also an unusually sensitive part of Pugh’s everyday life. She has said that she has a particularly strong sense of smell and has been able from a young age to notice subtle differences between fragrances. She could remember the perfume worn by different people and even identify whose clothing belonged to whom simply by its scent. That sensitivity has made perfume an especially useful tool when she prepares for a role. In another interview, Pugh explained that finding the right fragrance can take considerable time, but the process does not frustrate her because she genuinely enjoys discovering a character through scent.

For Pugh, there is also a specific moment when perfume becomes part of the transformation. After putting on the costume, she sprays the character’s fragrance onto herself before entering the set. She has described perfume as the “final piece” that completes the character. If clothing allows her to see the woman in the mirror, scent gives her a more private way of feeling that woman’s presence. It can be viewed as a particularly subtle form of method acting: it does not need to affect her co-stars or the production around her, yet it provides a psychological signal strong enough to influence the actress herself.

Notably, Pugh does not search for fragrances based simply on her own personal preferences. “I choose different perfumes for the characters that I play,” she explained, noting that a scent Florence herself would never buy can still become the perfect choice for a particular role. What matters, in her view, is identifying who the woman is, how she lives and what kind of fragrance could belong to her. Perfume, from Pugh’s perspective, is not merely something designed to make a person smell pleasant. It can also become a marker of identity.

That may partly explain why Pugh’s characters often feel so different from one another, even though the same actress is behind all of them. Following her breakthrough in Lady Macbeth, Pugh repeatedly chose roles that demanded significant transformation. Midsommar placed her inside the psychological collapse of a deeply traumatised woman. Little Women presented Amy March as ambitious, practical and determined to shape her own future. Yelena Belova introduced another side of Pugh entirely, while projects such as Don’t Worry Darling, Oppenheimer and Dune: Part Two continued to expand her range.

In 2020, Pugh received her first Oscar nomination for her performance as Amy March in Little Women, an important milestone that arrived relatively early in her international film career. From there, her position in Hollywood became increasingly established. She moved comfortably between critically acclaimed independent productions and global franchises such as Marvel and Dune. More recently, she took on the role of Cathy Ames in East of Eden, a new adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novel. The character presents another morally complicated figure, requiring Pugh to explore a very different psychological landscape.

While Pugh’s career has continued to expand, her private life has often become a parallel story that the actress has not always wanted the public to enter. One of the most closely watched relationships during the early years of her fame was with actor Zach Braff. The two began dating in 2019 after working together on the short film In the Time It Takes to Get There, and their 21-year age gap attracted significant attention online. Pugh publicly defended her personal choices and pushed back against the idea that strangers should decide whom she should or should not date.

After her split from Braff, Pugh continued to keep her romantic life relatively private. In recent years, she has been linked to actor Finn Cole. The pair have been seen together on several occasions, but both have maintained a relatively discreet approach to their relationship. By 2026, their reported romance had attracted greater public attention, while Pugh continued to emphasise her desire to protect her private space. Rumours of a possible engagement have circulated, although specific details have not always been publicly confirmed by either of them.

That discretion also reflects the way Pugh manages her public image. She is not the kind of star who appears determined to construct a flawless persona, but neither does she allow every part of her personal life to become public property. On screen, she is willing to go deeply into characters who are unstable, wounded or difficult to predict. Off screen, she tends to maintain a certain distance between Florence Pugh and the people audiences are curious to know more about. That separation may also explain why her perfume ritual is so meaningful: it belongs to her work, but it never needs to be visible to the audience.

In 2026, Pugh’s relationship with fragrance entered another chapter when she became the face of Max Mara Le Parfum. In interviews connected with the campaign, the actress continued discussing memories of scent, family and the way fragrance can become connected to personal identity. She has described having different perfume collections at home and choosing scents according to her mood. Some days call for something softer and more feminine, while on others she may prefer something stronger.

What makes the development particularly interesting is that even after becoming the face of a perfume brand, Pugh has not abandoned the distinction between her own scent and the scents of her characters. For her, fragrance can be part of everyday life while also functioning as a creative tool. She has spoken about scent being present while she works on film sets, travels for press tours and spends time at home, to the point that it has become part of her identity. Yet when she approaches a new role, she begins the search again, as though every character requires her own unique fingerprint.

Perhaps that is what makes Florence Pugh’s “perfume secret” more interesting than a simple behind-the-scenes anecdote. Cinema is largely an art of what audiences can see and hear, while scent exists beyond the usual sensory language of the screen. Viewers can see Amy March in her dress, Dani among the flower-filled fields of Midsommar or Yelena in her combat gear, but they cannot know what those characters smell like. Pugh can. For her, scent becomes another layer of identity, an invisible marker that allows a character to exist even before the audience fully sees them.

Ultimately, the most intriguing part of Florence Pugh’s method may be the privacy of it. She does not use perfume to create a performance for the audience; she uses it as a key for herself. A scent can evoke a particular era, lifestyle, type of woman or memory. When combined with costume, script and the physical presence of the actor, it gives a character another dimension that the camera cannot capture. For Pugh, every role therefore has more than a face, a voice or a wardrobe. It also has its own scent, and she is the only person who knows exactly what that scent is.