Mia Goth comes from another planet From the trilogy of X to the new Frankenstein, the British actress is a constant enigma to be solved

To talk about Mia Goth, let’s borrow a line from Christopher Young, Vice President & Creative Director, Tiffany Patrimony and Global Creative Visual Merchandising at Tiffany & Co., interviewed by Vanity Fair about the collaboration between the iconic maison and Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein. “Mia possesses a rare sensibility when it comes to wearing high jewelry; she gives new life and meaning to historic pieces. Every jewel - from the 1905 green tourmaline to the hard stone crosses - has been brought to life through her intense and refined interpretation.” The British actress, born in Southwark in 1993, plays Elizabeth in the film, a character who changes significantly compared to Mary Shelley’s novel, being more attuned to the Creature’s humanity than to that of men, and, for that, destined to a tragic love and end.

Mia Goth’s career: from Frankenstein to Emma and the X trilogy

That Young considers Mia Goth perfect for the exquisite jewels she wore during Frankenstein’s production is entirely understandable. There’s something striking about her. Her career, which began in 2013, has been a continuous sequence of daring, brilliant choices that have highlighted two of her defining traits. There’s her face, seemingly from another era, perfect for the Victorian setting of Del Toro’s adaptation (but equally fitting when she was cast as Harriet Smith in Emma in 2020), and then there’s that magnetic, enigmatic energy, both alluring and unsettling, that has made her, in just a few years, an authentic scream queen, thanks above all to the X trilogy by writer-director Ti West.

Mia Goth as Pearl, and beyond

In just two years, Mia Goth has played three different characters in as many films, each already carved into contemporary cinema in its own way. Among them, Pearl undoubtedly stands out. The naïve farm girl dreaming of becoming a star, who soon discovers that not everything that glitters is gold. While it was Ti West’s brilliantly gory writing that gave life to the character, it’s impossible to imagine anyone else in the role, especially because of that unforgettable scene where she screams “I’m a staaaaaar,” a moment so powerful it immediately became viral and iconic.

Nymphomaniac and the beginning of her career

What emerges from the X trilogy, however, is the synthesis of everything Mia Goth had been before, and a promise of what she is yet to become. Her film career began with nothing less than Nymphomaniac, a work in which sexuality - a recurring theme in her filmography - is portrayed as daring yet never gratuitous. In Ti West’s hands, it becomes an expression of the grotesque world of adult entertainment, both in X: A Sexy Horror Story and in the concluding chapter MaXXXine, which turns into a critique of the entertainment industry as a whole. This blend of eroticism and horror has shaped Goth’s artistic path. After all, even Nymphomaniac could, in a way, be seen as such. While not all her forays have been equally successful (as in A Cure for Wellness by Gore Verbinski), she quickly regained her footing with Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria in 2018 and Brandon Cronenberg’s hallucinatory Infinity Pool in 2023.

Because that’s what truly defines Mia Goth, the feeling that she comes from another world, another era, maybe even another planet. As if she had always belonged in the cosmic void of High Life by Claire Denis, or as if the sumptuous gowns of Frankenstein were already part of her skin. She’s a paradox, eloquent yet obscure. There are no half measures with her: she’s either ethereal or shadowy. She can bring light, as she does to Del Toro’s Creature, but if she wished, she could just as easily drag you down into the underworld.