Oxford: Florence Pugh in Time's top 10 Next Generation Leaders list

The 2023 list highlights '10 trendsetters and trailblazers who are guiding the way to a brighter future', says the magazine. 

The June double issue features a cover profile of Hollywood star Ms Pugh, 27, whose father Clinton is well-known Oxford restaurateur.

She tells TIME about her on-set experience with Timothée Chalamet while filming Dune 2, the controversial Don't Worry Darling filming, entering the Marvel cinematic universe, and defining her public persona. 

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TIME Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs said: “The Next Generation Leaders list is, as always, a global undertaking, with TIME’s reporters and editors scouting what leadership looks like across the planet.

"Together, this class joins the more than 175 individuals recognized as TIME Next Generation Leaders since 2014.

"At a moment when society’s problems can seem insurmountable, it is so inspiring to see these young leaders bring new perspectives and share fresh ideas.”

A cover profile by Eliana Dockterman describes Ms Pugh as "a magnetic and multifaceted onscreen presence, the kind that doesn’t come around very often".

She adds: "Pugh has charisma to spare."

Ms Pugh reveals that she and Timothée Chalamet, who starred in Little Women together, had to be separated in the Dune hair and makeup trailer because they “were having too much fun.”

M Chalamet caused a stir in Oxford last year when he was spotted in the city filming for Wonka.

On the rumours that swirled around the casting for Don't Worry Darling in which she starred with Harry Styles, Ms Pugh tells TIME: “A whole film set, it’s everybody making a huge effort because they want to be there. And If someone doesn’t want to be there or if someone isn’t pulling their weight, you can feel it.

"The film feels wrong.” 

On portraying strong-willed women who fight against society's expectations, she said: “Even if they’re not defined on the page, I always find some way to make them quite confrontational…I never see the bad in them—even when they have killed children and burned boyfriends.

"I’ve always understood them as people that needed to do what they had to do to survive.”

She said she received a backlash to her starring in various films and shows for Marvel.

“So many people in the indie film world were really pi**ed off at me," she said. "They were like, ‘Great, now she’s gone for ever’… And I’m like, no, I’m working as hard as I used to work. I’ve always done back-to-back movies.

"It’s just people are watching them now. You just have to be a bit more organized with your schedule.”

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And why, when producers asked her to change her body she decided she would not return to Hollywood until she had a better grasp of what she wanted to represent, and she returned to star in a WWE film: “The person I came back to was a female wrestler with muscles and big thighs who made her own name as a champion... I quite liked that because the last time I’d been there I was told I needed to lose weight - it was just so not the person I wanted to be.” 

She added that she had managed to maintain control of her image in the spotlight.

She said: “I would never show one side of me because that’s setting myself up to fail… I don’t want anyone to make money catching me out being me.

"I want to give them all of me.”

The June 12 /June 19 double issue of TIME goes on sale on Friday, June 9.