Florence Pugh’s journey from Oxford, England, restaurant floors to Hollywood red carpets mirrors the classic rags-to-riches narrative that captivates audiences worldwide. The English actress, now worth $8 million, has transformed from a teenage waitress serving pizza and flirting with barmen at her father’s establishment into one of Britain’s most celebrated performers.
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But unlike the fictional Flo from “Alice,” also a waitress, who famously told customers to “Kiss My Grits” when faced with difficult patrons, Pugh has said her real-life restaurant experience taught her grace under pressure and the confidence that would later define her career.
“There’s an enormous amount of power when you’re behind a bar,” Pugh told Vogue in 2023, reflecting on her formative years at Café Coco, her father Clinton’s Oxford restaurant.
Her father still remembers those early days.
“Florence would love to sit and flirt with the barman. They’d always love to have the pizza with tzatziki, hence Florence always says tzatziki goes with everything,” he said to The Times.
The experience shaped her understanding of service and teamwork.
“All of, all of the siblings, all the kids, all of our first jobs were in restaurants,” she once explained in Oxford Mail, perhaps revealing her understanding of what it takes to keep a family business afloat— and her duty to not let her family’s business go under.
In 2025, Pugh is a Marvel darling, earning an eight-figure payday for two Marvel Cinematic Universe films as Yelena Belova in “Black Widow” (2021) and the upcoming “Thunderbolts” (2025), according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The 27-year-old star’s ascent began in 2014 with “The Falling,” but her breakthrough year in 2019 with “Fighting with My Family,” “Midsommar,” and her Oscar-nominated performance in “Little Women” established her Hollywood credentials before Marvel made her a franchise cornerstone.
And with this newfound wealth, she is able to help her family out.
Clinton Pugh, 64, has operated restaurants in Oxford for three decades, including Café Coco, which opened in 1992 and once counted Radiohead and Supergrass among its patrons. “Florence has worked there … they all have,” he confirmed, describing how all his children learned the business from the ground up.
The pandemic dealt a crushing blow to Clinton’s three restaurants, but the introduction of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods by Oxfordshire County Council in 2023 proved even more devastating. These traffic-filtering measures have strangled local businesses, with Café Coco’s revenue plummeting 25 percent.
“People are not coming, footfall has fallen hugely,” Clinton lamented. “It’s drastically affecting my cashflow and whether I will be able to survive.”
Facing potential bankruptcy and the loss of 54 jobs, Clinton turned to his famous daughter for help.
“She has offered to help and has helped out, over the last two years it ain’t been a lot of fun,” he revealed. “Why should I ask my daughter for money? She’s already helped me out financially [with] a lot of money where I had cashflow problems, it’s not fair.”
Florence’s restaurant experience proved invaluable beyond financial support. She described the confidence it instilled: “Dealing with great people, and also dealing with s—t people. I think when you’re a teenager and you’re working in any establishment, you think that you are there for the business.”
The work taught essential life skills, she says: “You’re there to work as part of a family, you’re there to work as a team, and then equally, you’re there to grow as a person.”
Her culinary passion, showcased in her popular “Cooking with Flo” Instagram series, stems directly from this restaurant heritage.
“So I grew up in a big family, four siblings, two sets of grandparents that loved food,” she explained. This background influenced her professional approach: “I’m never losing weight to look fantastic for a role. It’s more like: How would this character have lived?”
Pugh’s shift from restaurant work to international acting roles hasn’t seem to erase the early lessons she picked up in Oxford. Her ongoing support for her family’s business, along with her continued interest in cooking and food, suggest those early experiences remain a meaningful part of her personal and professional life.