Florence Pugh Buzzed Her Hair Because She Wanted to Do Away With "Vanity"

Florence Pugh shocked fans back in May when she unveiled her freshly buzzed hair at the Met Gala. And while she’s since dyed her locks in various colors—black, pink, orange—her choice to do away with her longer hair was, in fact, not related to aesthetics.

In an interview with the Radio Times, Pugh revealed that she chose to go makeup-free and shave her head for a deeper reason. “I purposefully chose to look like that,” Pugh said. “I wanted vanity out of the picture.”

While Pugh never backs down from a statement on the carpet, her beauty choices seem to be more related to her on-screen characters and how she is perceived by audiences. “Hollywood is very glamorous,” the 27-year-old actress explained. “It’s hard for an audience to see past that. Whenever I’ve not needed to be glam or have a full face of makeup, I fight to keep it that way. It helps the audience.”

Pugh’s last public appearance was at the Oppenheimer premiere last week in London where she matched her fiery hair to her Valentino gown. However, due to the ongoing SAG-AFTRA Strike, all of Pugh’s (and the industry’s) press obligations have been put on hold for the foreseeable future.

Pugh has been open about defying Hollywood beauty standards in the past. In a 2022 interview with The Telegraph, the actress described her disappointment when directors tried to change her appearance after landing a “top-of-the-game” role as a rising pop star.

“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,” she noted. “I’d thought the film business would be like [my experience of making] The Falling, but actually, this was what the top of the game looked like, and I felt I’d made a massive mistake.”

Unfortunately, this is an all too common occurrence for Hollywood actors. Thankfully, the series was never produced, which seemed to have worked out well in the long run for Pugh.

Shortly after that negative experience, she starred as Katherine Lester in Lady Macbeth and further cemented her status with a breakout role in Midsommar. She’s also set to appear in Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated blockbuster, Oppenheimer, set to premiere on July 21st.