Florence Pugh: 'Nasty' Comments About Weight 'Really Painful'

Florence Pugh is speaking out about her critics, saying the Internet can be "a very mean place" where hurtful comments about her body and confidence have taken a toll. 

"It's so hard," the 28-year-old actor told British Vogue for its October issue. "It's really painful to read people being nasty about my confidence or nasty about my weight. It never feels good.

"The one thing I always wanted to achieve was to never sell someone else, something that isn't the real me." 

Pugh previously spoke about being her authentic self in an interview with Elle UK, saying last year, "I speak the way I do about my body because I'm not trying to hide the cellulite on my thigh or the squidge in between my arm and my boob."

Her bluntness, Pugh told British Vogue, is not an attempt to appear confident. 

"I think it's just, like, I don't want to be anyone else," she said.

Commenting on magazine cover shoots, Pugh explained they are "a muscle I've learned to be all right at."

"I'm not a model. It's portraying a completely different version of myself that I don't necessarily believe in. You have to believe that you deserve to be in those pages being beautiful," Pugh said.

"But now I know what I want to show. I know who I want to show. I know who I want to be and I know what I look like. There's no insecurities about what I am anymore."

In that vein, the actor said she did not hesitate to shave her head for her upcoming film, "We Live in Time," in which she plays a cancer patient. While many stars would be apprehensive to go to such lengths to portray a character, Pugh said it was "completely important that you see her head and we see her shaving it – it was just always a no-brainer."

"You have the honor of doing something to yourself that is totally in support of the character," she said, adding, "I've never found it a challenge to be acting in pain."

"I sometimes prefer it. That's always the most important thing, whatever I do. I feel like it's my duty to play human and ugly, to translate what looks real and what feels painful – whether that's an ugly cry or a face that doesn't settle or a stomach that sits [isn't held in] when you're naked," she continued, noting that, what Is important is "that I'm a good person and people feel good in my presence."

• Sydney Sweeney Responds to Body Commentary: Have No Control or Say
• Megan Fox Confirms Having Plastic Surgery