When Florence Pugh first made her relationship with Zach Braff Instagram official, the reaction was tough for her to deal with.

The 25-year-old posted to Instagram in April 2020 in honour of theScrubsstar's 45th birthday, showing him and their foster dog together.

But within minutes, she had to "turn off the comments" on the post due to the incessant "hateful comments" she received.

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People had very strong opinions about her relationship, mostly because of the 21-year age gap between the couple.

And now, even one year on, Pugh still faces criticism about her relationship.

"I think it bugs people that it's not who they expected," she told the Sunday Times in a new interview.

"But it's my life and I'm not doing anything to please people or to make it a better headline or story. I want to also be a person!"

TheBlack Widowactor has since disabled comments on any photos she posts of Braff.

"It's so weird to me to go on to someone's page and sh*t on it," she told theSunday Times.

"That's so not my nature — to go and bully for the sake of bullying. It's such an odd thing that we've become okay with in the past 10 years of social media."

Appearing on the Sue Perkins: An hour or so with... podcast last year, Pugh spoke about the initial reaction to her relationship.

"I've always found it funny, how I can be good enough for people to watch my work and support my work and pay for tickets, and I'm old enough to be an adult and pay taxes, but I'm not old enough to know who I should and should not have sex with?" Pugh told host Perkins.

"Yet again, once again, it's making a young woman feel like sh*t for no reason."

Pugh further defended her relationship in an interview with Elle UK in May 2020.

"I have the right to hang out and be with and go out with anyone I want to," she said, saying that people had no right to "educate" her on her private life.

"I know that part of being in the spotlight is that people might invade your privacy and have opinions on it, but it's bizarre that normal folk are allowed to display such hate and opinions on a part of my life that I'm not putting out there.

"It's a strange side of fame that you’re allowed to be torn apart by thousands of people even though you didn't put that piece of you out there. My point to all this is that isn't it odd that a stranger can totally tear apart someone's relationship and it's allowed?"

Sharing a video to Instagram days after going Instagram official with Braff, Pugh responded to the backlash from her followers.

"Within about eight minutes of the photo being posted [on my page], I had about 70 per cent of the comments hurling abuse and being horrid and basically bullying someone on my page," she said.

"It is the first time in my Instagram life that I have had to turn the comments off on my page," she added.

"I will not allow that behaviour on my page. I'm not about that. It makes me upset."