ALEXANDRA SHIPP as Susan Wilson

“I knew that I had a passion for acting,” she says. “I knew it was something that, if I got the chance to do it, I would attack it with everything I had.” Balfe was aware she was at a disadvantage as a late starter, even at the not-exactly-old age of 29. Still, she began to build a career, commencing with the smallest of roles in J.J. Abrams’s Super 8. “I didn’t speak and I was the dead mom,” she says with a laugh, “but at least I spent a day with J.J. You kind of feel like, Well, if that person who’s really incredible and successful gives you a sort of seal of approval, then maybe that means something.”

The smaller jobs kept coming for a while, but then things dried up. One day, Balfe was standing in a dog park with a friend when her manager called her and dumped her. At that point, she hadn’t worked in five or six months. At first, “He kept telling me, ‘You have to wear the dress and put the makeup on and do the hot-girl thing.’ And it was so not me,” she says. “I’m glad I knew that I wanted to do it with integrity, if that makes any sense.”

FLORENCE PUGH as AMY MARCH Little Women (2019)

“Lately I’ve been hearing this sound everywhere I go. Like a tick, tick, tick.”

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, FLORENCE PUGH! (january 3rd, 1996) ♡