FLORENCE PUGH

has to pick up the pieces of her life after a sudden tragedy. Braff wrote the script with Pugh in mind. “The movie that we made together genuinely was probably one of my most favorite experiences,” says Pugh. “It felt like a very natural and easy thing to do.”

It also helped her realize how she wants to work going forward. “I feel like I am now getting into this groove in my career where I’m knowing what I can take, what I give, and what I will not accept anymore,” says Pugh, who also appears this fall in Sebastián Lelio’s sweeping Netflix film The Wonder, just wrapped work on Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, and began shooting Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two over the summer. “Being on these last few movies with some of the greats has been truly a wonderful way to kick myself back into the mode of ‘This is what you want to do.’ ”

Still, some at least have remained unfazed by all the buzz. “I went to see my gran, and she goes, ‘So what’s all of this business about your nipples, then?’ ” Pugh recalls. Pugh showed her a few photos. “She gasped,” Pugh says. “Because the dress was so beautiful.”