Credit: Netflix

Florence Pugh has played characters that never shy away from making life difficult for everyone around them, and East of Eden gives her the biggest challenge of all time: Cathy Ames, perhaps the most infamous character in John Steinbeck’s novel, with all the baggage that comes with playing somebody readers have spent decades calling cruel.

Zoe Kazan’s adaptation gives Cathy far more room than the 1955 film ever could, and Pugh uses that space to make her feel like a person rather than the cruel character she is. You may despise what Cathy does, but dismissing her outright becomes much harder once Pugh gets hold of the role.

And that is the fun of watching her, really: Pugh has built a career around characters who are a hard pill to swallow, and the minute you think you understood them a bit, they change colour.

So if Cathy Ames has sent you down a Florence Pugh rabbit hole, Netflix has four films waiting to entertain you with more such characters.

Florence Pugh movies to binge if you loved her in East of Eden

The Wonder (Sebastián Lelio, 2022)

Cathy Ames has already shown you what Florence Pugh can do with a woman who doesn’t fit in the perfect mould, and The Wonder gives her another role with plenty to push against. Pugh plays Lib Wright, a Nightingale nurse sent to 1862 Ireland to watch over Anna O’Donnell, an 11-year-old girl whose family insists she has gone months without food. The village calls it a miracle, naturally, and then Lib comes and takes one look at the child’s health, and, well… she is not buying it.

Pugh studied the history of Nightingale nurses for the role, but something to keep in mind here is Lib is carrying baggage of her own because she has lost a daughter, and that grief sticks her into the case. Once she starts questioning what everyone around Anna wants to believe, things start getting thorny pretty fast. Sebastian Lelio adapts Emma Donoghue’s novel into a story about belief colliding, and after Cathy, seeing Pugh take on another woman trapped inside somebody else’s idea of who she should be feels bang on.

Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan, 2023)

Christopher Nolan warned Florence Pugh that Jean Tatlock was a small role in Oppenheimer and even apologised for how little screen time she would have. Pugh’s response was more or less that she would have turned up to make coffee in the background if it meant working with him. And, really, can you blame the woman? She may only have a fraction of the film, but once Jean appears, you can’t help but take your eyes off.

Tatlock was a real psychiatrist and a member of the Communist Party who became an important part of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s personal life, and their relationship kept affecting him after he married Kitty, played by Emily Blunt. Pugh had a small fraction of the screen time, but she made sure to register Jean like she never felt like some footnote in a three-hour biopic, which is no small feat.

Don’t Worry, Darling (Olivia Wilde, 2022)

Pugh plays Alice Chambers in Don’t Worry Darling, a woman who seems to have landed the dream: a gorgeous home in Victory and a husband, Jack, played by Harry Styles, who goes to work while she gets on with life in this picture-perfect 1950s community. Sounds lovely… except soon enough, the whole place starts looking like something that makes you want to check where the exits are. That’s right, the exits. Pugh’s Alice begins noticing cracks in the story she has been sold, and once she starts poking at them, the men in charge want her quiet.

Olivia Wilde directs, with Chris Pine playing Victory founder Frank, and Pugh shows her magic once she suspects something is wrong, and soon enough that suspicion turns into anger. That is where the East of Eden connection lies here, because after watching Pugh nail Cathy Ames, seeing her play another woman playing by somebody else’s rules has a certain kick to it.

Little Women (Greta Gerwig, 2019)

Amy March has been catching flak from readers for generations, mostly because burning Jo’s manuscript is the main thing people remember, and then she grows up wanting refinement, security and a life with Laurie, which has never helped her reputation much either. But when Amy was handed to Florence Pugh, she flipped the whole picture, and a huge thanks goes to Greta Gerwig because she lets her keep the vanity and ambition but at the same time provides context to understand where both come from.

Pugh also makes Amy’s view of marriage land more impactfully because she knows love cannot be separated from money when women have so little financial freedom, and once you hear her spell that out, her choices make a lot more sense.

Pugh earned an Oscar nomination for supporting actress, and after East of Eden, you can see the appeal. Cathy Ames is far darker, of course, but both roles give Pugh a woman audiences think they have already figured out, only for her to come along and make the verdict even more messed up.