Age: 30
female
Florence Pugh (/pjuː/ PEW; born 3 January 1996) is an English actress. After making her acting debut in the drama film The Falling (2014), Pugh gained praise for starring in the independent drama Lady Macbeth (2016) and the miniseries The Little Drummer Girl (2018). Her international breakthrough came in 2019 with her portrayals of professional wrestler Paige in the sports film Fighting with My Family, a despondent American woman in the horror film Midsommar, and Amy March in the period drama Little Women. For the last of these, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Pugh has played Yelena Belova in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring in the films Black Widow (2021) and Thunderbolts* (2025) and the Disney+ miniseries Hawkeye (2021). In her highest-grossing releases, she voiced Goldilocks in Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (2022) and portrayed Jean Tatlock in Oppenheimer (2023) and Princess Irulan in Dune: Part Two (2024). She also continued to gain praise for her performances in dramas such as We Live in Time (2024). Description above from the Wikipedia article Florence Pugh, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Stephen King (writing as Richard Bachman) crafted The Running Man early in his career, though after such mega-hits as Carrie and The Shining. A bit of a departure from the supernatural horror that is most frequently associated with his work, the novel describes a science fiction dystopia where market capitalism and television game shows have spiraled out of control, and the separation between the haves and the have-nots has been formalized with separate currencies. King establishes characters quickly, creating sympathy in the first few pages for Ben Richards--whose 18-month-old baby girl is suffering from a horrible cough, perhaps pneumonia. Not able to afford medicine, Richards enters himself in the last-chance money-making scheme of the Free-Vee games. The games include Treadmill to Bucks, in which heart-attack prone contestants struggle to outlast a progressively demanding treadmill, or the accurately named Swim the Crocodiles. After a rigorous battery of physical and mental examinations, Richards is assigned "Elevator Six"--the path of a chosen few--that leads to The Running Man game. In this game, the stakes and the prizes are raised. Success means a life of luxury. Failure means death. Unfortunately, few ever win the game; in fact, as the producer tells Richards, in six years no one has survived.
