Florence Pugh proved she isn’t afraid to take some scissors to her own hair for a role.
The Don’t Worry Darling star told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show that “it was my idea” to cut off her actual hair for Zach Braff’s A Good Person. At the beginning of the film, which follows Pugh’s Allison as she forms an unlikely friendship with her would-be father-in-law, Daniel (Morgan Freeman) after surviving an unimaginable tragedy, her character impulsively chops off her hair.
“I was like, ‘Zach, I think I should chop my hair off at the beginning of the movie.’ And he was like, ‘The beginning of the movie – cool. That’s not gonna work,’” she explained.
Pugh said the crew was worried about how to shoot the film in order if she cuts her hair at the beginning of filming. Her response to that was, “You’ll figure it out.”
She added that the team had a big conversation and told Braff, “This is insane. She can’t do this. This is not helpful at all.” The director tried to convince her to use a wig, but she doubled down, saying again, “You’ll figure it out.” And so they did.
In a recent interview with USA Today, the Midsommar actress said everyone on set was “really anxious” since they were only going to have one take to get it, but that she “found it really liberating.”
She continued, “If anything, it was like the final key to unlocking this character. It took vanity out the window.”
Pugh also shared a personal connection to the scene, recalling as a teenager experiencing similar impulsive moments because she was “just looking in any direction but the thing that was making me sad.”
“For me, whenever I was particularly low as a teenager, I would do lots of quick fixes,” she said. “I would buy things like nail kits or scissors and go onto YouTube and find out how to do it.”
A Good Person is currently playing in theaters.
