Not many young actors start their careers playing a blood-thirsty seductress in an explicit film about an unquenchable thirst for sex. Mia Goth, however, is not your average young actor. Through a clever mix of working with established arthouse directors and fresh new voices, she has designed one of the most exciting career trajectories in contemporary Hollywood.
The English daughter of a Brazilian mother and a Canadian father, the actress began her career as a model — and still remains very much a fashion icon — before landing a role in Lars Von Trier’s aforementioned controversial movie Nymphomaniac Pt. II in 2014. From the high-profile launchpad, she proceeded to dip her toes into horror, slowly solidifying herself as one of the leading final girls of her generation. Her mouse-like voice, almost non-existent brows and big brown eyes have granted her an unmistakable presence on-screen.
In less than a decade, the 29-year-old has built an impressive body of work, recently being the subject of awards season chatter for her turn as Pearl/Maxine in the first two instalments of Ti West’s X trilogy, with the star set to reprise her scream queen porn star role for the upcoming third movie. X was Mia’s first leading role, allowing her to tap into an innate ability to switch between the naivete of a fawn and the predatorial fierceness of a leopard; the baby blue of her soft eyeshadow mixed with the deep crimson hue of blood.
To celebrate her latest turn in Brandon Cronenberg’s Sundance hit Infinity Pool, we rummaged through all of the actress’ feature films — from a floating masturbatorium to the hottest witch coven of all time — to rank them from worst to best.
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13. Everest, 2015
This addition to the list could be easily disputed since Mia is as scarce a commodity in Everest the film, as oxygen atop the actual Everest mountain. Still, here she is as Meg Weathers — the teenage daughter of Beck Weathers (played by Barbra Streisand’s son-in-law Josh Brolin) — an experienced climber attempting to summit the famed mount. As usual with high-adrenaline adventure movies, things don’t go to plan and Beck and his fellow mountaineers find themselves an inch away from disaster. Everest is an entertaining, if by-the-books thriller and there is little to be said about Mia’s brief performance, although she does get to act opposite the always excellent Robin Wright, which is always a plus.
12. A Cure for Wellness, 2017
An ambitious young executive (played by the Michael Pitt of the 2010s, Dane DeHaan) is sent to a reclusive wellness retreat in the German alps to persuade his boss to return to his life — and most importantly, his job — in New York. What he encounters instead is a cult-like hospice disguised as a health spa and, soon enough, his boss becomes the least of his problems. Mia lands her first horror role as the youngest patient in the centuries-old institution; a girl whose mysterious past is intrinsically tied to the dark history of the mansion. Tapping into her natural ghost-like features, Goth is predictably great — it’s a shame the film itself never fully delivers on its promising premise.
11. Marrowbone, 2017
You’ve got to give it to director Sergio G. Sánchez: it’s quite a feat to gather an iconic cast that includes Mia Goth, Anya Taylor-Joy, George MacKay and Charlie Heaton in one movie, even if the final result doesn’t quite reach the usual quality of its stars. As Jane Marrowbone, Mia embodies the many misfortunes of the Marrowbone siblings, a family plagued by poverty, disease and the mysterious wrongdoings of their patriarch. Sánchez riffs on the suspense tropes used in hits such as The Others (2002) and The Sixth Sense (1998) to comment on how trauma can lead to life-shattering mental health issues. Unfortunately, it often comes off as Little House on the Prairie for people who are way too into true-crime podcasts. Mia does what she can with a movie that is set on portraying Jane solely as the sorrowful byproduct of unleashed cruelty.
10. Mayday, 2021
A struggling waitress is catapulted from her gruelling hotel job to a dreamlike reality where a never-ending war forces a group of women to band together in the name of survival. A modern take on the myth of the siren from director Karen Cinorre, Mayday sees Mia Goth as Marsha, the determined leader of the all-female operation centred around luring gullible soldiers to their death. Despite a deliciously misandrist Mia, Mayday is largely a competent exercise in cinematography and score – beautiful to look at, if void of substantial critique. It drinks from the fountain of Alice in Wonderland and regurgitates a visually stunning yet insipid attempt at a feminist fable.
9. X, 2022
A witty parallel between the early days of amateur porn and low-budget slashers, Ti West’s X positioned itself as a film daring to portray a final girl in full control of her sexuality. Alas, it fails to build an enlightened portrayal of sex work and female pleasure by delivering a frustrating attempt that often veers into the dangerous trap of hagsploitation. On the bright side, this is a solid show of practical effects and an undeniable love letter to horror classics. It also provides us with our first taste of Mia as Pearl/Maxine Minx, the actor’s first lead roles and the perfect vehicle for her to carve out her own interpretation of the iconic scream queen.
8. The House, 2022
A charming animated triptych revolving around an old, doll house-like mansion, Enda Walsh’s The House is a moving exploration of mental health, family dynamics and the often bumpy road to happiness. Despite her signature mousy voice, this is the first time Mia Goth has lent her speech to an animated character. She plays Mabel, the chubby-cheeked daughter of two parents spiralling into madness after being gifted an opulent house they could never dream of affording. It is an inspired match, with Mia soulfully communicating the sorrows and desperation of a girl forced to face the horrors of human nature at far too young an age.
7. Pearl, 2022
If you scrolled through Twitter in 2022, chances are you’ve stumbled upon the image of a grinning Mia Goth, hair neatly tied in a lace bow, face turned red by strain. The frame belongs to the final scene of Ti West’s Pearl, co-written and starring Mia and announced as a surprise prequel during X’s buzzy festival run. It follows the background story of the titular character, cast as the villain in X but presented in Pearl as a woman driven to chaos and violence by claustrophobic hopelessness. This is a film built around the actor’s performance, enabling her to dive into the hyperbolic elements of acting she is fond of but rarely allowed to fully lean into. Mia is predictably great, but, by the time one arrives at the closing monologue (designed to be cut as an awards clip), Pearl feels less like a film and more like an actor’s sizzle reel.
6. Emma, 2020
Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility might be Jane Austen’s most notorious screen adaptations, but it is Emma, her final book to be published in life, that has rendered the most delightful modern revisions: Amy Heckerling’s Clueless (1995) and this, Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation. While Anya Taylor-Joy takes on the titular role of the puppeteering matchmaker in de Wilde’s assured feature debut, it is Mia who steals the scene as Harriet, the quiet companion to the wealthy (and impossibly self-entitled) protagonist. Dripping with wit, Emma is an impeccable feat of costume and production design that goes on the opposite hand of Marrowbone in uniting some of the most promising British stars of today (Josh O’Connor, Johnny Flynn and Connor Swindells also star as a varied bunch of suitors) all at their most charming. A treat.
5. The Survivalist, 2015
The first 17 minutes of Stephen Fingleton’s post-apocalyptic thriller The Survivalist are composed of an eerie quiet only disrupted when two unexpected strangers lay foot on the well-enclosed farm of a lonely man. The man is the unnamed survivalist, an ever-suspicious underground outcast; the two strangers are a young woman (Mia) and her mother, looking for some food and shelter. From this initial conflict, the movie grippingly seesaws between trust and betrayal that is greatly effective in its sustained minimalist tension, the survivalist and the young woman prancing around one another in a constant switch between prey and predator. Mia’s first role post-Nymphomaniac has her stepping once more into the idea of sexuality as a commodity, a territory she navigates with spellbinding confidence.
4. Infinity Pool, 2023
With Old, Triangle of Sadness and Sundown all being released within the past year, it seems like affluent people can’t catch a break — not even on holiday. The same is true of Brandon Cronenberg’s latest, a nightmarish bacchanal about the twisted punitive methods employed in a fictional tropical country that serves as a hot destination for the wealthy. Arthouse himbo Alexander Skarsgård is failed writer James, and Mia is the alluring woman he meets while vacationing with his wife. Sporting long blonde hair and perfectly drawn winged eyeliner, the latter evokes a young Brigitte Bardot to incorporate the vicious ring leader of a depraved gang of rich tourists. Infinity Pool has psychedelic orgies, hot clones and Alexander wearing a leather dog collar. Need I say more?
3. Suspiria, 2018
Luca Guadagnino took a sharp turn with the follow-up to his critically acclaimed drama Call Me By Your Name with an adaptation of Dario Argento’s 1977 dark giallo classic Suspiria. Well, not so much an adaptation as a reimagining, as the filmmaker dives deeper into the dynamics and mythology behind a witch coven disguised as a dance academy in the heart of a still divided Germany. Mia’s Sara is one of the academy’s young dancers and the one to show newcomer Susie (Dakota Johnson in a gorgeous burnt-orange wig) the ropes. Aided by the dramatic beats of horror, Mia contorts her body as if it is a puzzle she’s desperate to solve, yet another coadjuvant performance that clouds the film’s inspired protagonist.
2. Nymphomaniac Pt II, 2013
Split into two parts because of its bloated four hour runtime (with a five hour 30 minute director’s cut) Lars Von Trier‘s erotic art film Nymphomaniac surgically dissects the morality of human desire through chronicling the many woes of Joe (played by both Stacy Martin and Charlotte Gainsbourg), a self-diagnosed nymphomaniac whose life is destroyed by her incurable sexual compulsion. A goldmine for controversy, the film was the subject of much hubbub due to its extremely graphic content and the digital superimposition of pornstar doubles in the explicit sex scenes. Needless to say, this was quite the inaugural stage for a young actress, yet Mia Goth unsurprisingly took it in her stride as P, Joe’s teen lover and protegé. The riské film launched the doe-eyed actress to the eager arms of the film and fashion industry — talk about an opening statement.
1. High Life, 2018
A film featuring a naked Juliette Binoche draped in long, dark hair while riding a dildo chair would top any list. French director Claire Denis not only blesses us with a self-pleasuring Juliette but also gifts us a masturbatorium labelled The Fuckbox, and a buzzcut Robert Pattinson lovingly tending to an infant while contemplating his impending demise. An erotic sci-fi about a group of death row inmates enlisted as part of an outer space experiment on fertility, High Life places Mia as Boyse, the unwilling mother to Robert’s baby. Possessed by an inherent violence aggravated by isolation, her characterisation is that of a caged animal, always a mere second away from imploding. It is no coincidence one of Mia’s finest turns comes in the greatest film of her curriculum thus far.