(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Wed 10 December 2025 14:30, UK
Every actor has at least one film that they regret making, whether that be because they don’t think they performed well enough or simply because they realised it was actually just a bad movie.
I’m sure even the most talented actors have a movie under their belt that they wish they hadn’t done, and Florence Pugh is no exception. The British actor made her film debut in 2014 with a role in the mystery drama The Falling, which soon led to her leading role in Lady Macbeth, a stunning thriller in which a young Pugh, just 19 at the time, demonstrated her impressive command of the screen.
It didn’t take long for Pugh to hit it big, though, with a string of movies allowing her to become well known outside of her native England. Midsommar and Little Women were both released in 2019, the latter of which landed her with an Oscar nomination, and soon she was Hollywood royalty. I mean, by 2021, she’d become Yelena Belova in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, so her success was pretty much in the bag.
Despite the fact that she is now a wildly popular star with credits in everything from Oppenheimer to Dune: Part Two, she still looks back on a certain movie with regret, her decision to star in it sending a cold shiver down her spine. In fact, she hasn’t even seen the movie, but filming it was evidently enough to make her wish she’d never committed to it.
Talking to Louis Theroux, she highlighted her lack of pride for starring in the film Malevolent, directed by Olaf de Fleur Johannesson, which follows a brother and sister who fake paranormal encounters, only to end up sucked into a world of terrifying hallucinations, delusions, and violence.
Co-starring alongside Ben Lloyd-Hughes as her brother, Pugh took on the role when she was still relatively new to acting, and she didn’t have a full grasp on making the right career decisions just yet. Now, when she looks back on the film, she wishes she’d just passed on it, telling Theroux, “It’s probably the one movie that I wish I never did. I think everybody has one of those movies.”
She added, “I think it was just a movie that I did when I was younger and I needed money. And I was like, ‘well, obviously this is great’. And then I got there and it wasn’t great.”
It was a rather predictable movie, with the siblings, of course, experiencing real paranormal activity when they’re mid-scam, making them question everything. It’s certainly not one of Pugh’s finest films, although it was just another stepping stone towards greater success in the grand scheme of things, because it taught her not to be so hasty when it comes to selecting projects.
After Malevolent, Pugh’s choices got much better, and the following year, she took Hollywood by storm in a much better horror film, Midsommar. Less predictable and actually horrifying, Pugh soon realised that she was built for movies much better than something like Malevolent, and she never looked back.
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