Mia Goth (born 1993) is the London-born actress who played Maxine Minx and Pearl in Ti West’s X trilogy, and co-wrote Pearl.
In X, Mia Goth plays the girl who wants to be a star and the old woman who wants her dead. The second one cost her ten hours in the makeup chair before every twelve-hour day on set, and the backstory she and Ti West wrote for that old woman during a COVID quarantine became a whole second film.
Quick Specs
| Born | October 25, 1993, Guy’s Hospital, Southwark, London (as Mia Gypsy Mello da Silva Goth) |
| Horror centrepiece | Maxine Minx and Pearl in X (2022); Pearl in Pearl (2022), which she co-wrote; Maxine in MaXXXine (2024), which she also produced |
| Other horror | A Cure for Wellness (2016), Marrowbone (2017), Suspiria (2018), Infinity Pool (2023), Frankenstein (2025) |
| Screen debut | Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013), as P |
| Key wins | Sitges Best Actress for Pearl (2022); two Critics’ Choice Super Awards for Pearl; the ensemble Robert Altman Award at the Independent Spirit Awards for Suspiria |
| Key nominations | Independent Spirit Best Lead Performance for Pearl; Bram Stoker Award for the Pearl screenplay, with Ti West |
| Latest | Melantho in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026) |
| Next | One of the villains in Star Wars: Starfighter, dated May 28, 2027 |
| Family | Grandmother Maria Gladys, Brazilian actress; grandfather Lee Jaffe, American artist |
Who She Is
Mia Gypsy Mello da Silva Goth was born on October 25, 1993, at Guy’s Hospital in Southwark, London. Her mother, Rachel Goth, born Gladys, is Brazilian and worked as a waitress, raising her largely as a single parent. Her father, Eric Goth, is Canadian, originally from Nova Scotia. Her maternal grandmother is the Brazilian actress Maria Gladys, and her grandfather is the American artist Lee Jaffe.
Her childhood moved around. At two weeks old she was taken to Brazil, where her mother, then 20, needed her family’s help. She came back to the United Kingdom at five. At ten she tried living with her father in Canada, a brief, unhappy stretch in which, by her account, she went through nine schools in a single school year. At twelve she settled with her mother in southeast London and went to Sydenham School.
At 14 the fashion photographer Gemma Booth spotted her at London’s Underage Festival. She signed with Storm Model Management, did campaigns for Miu Miu and Prada, and started auditioning for film roles at 16.
She met the actor Shia LaBeouf on the set of Nymphomaniac in 2012. In October 2016 a Las Vegas ceremony with an Elvis impersonator was livestreamed; Clark County said its records showed no marriage licence and that “a commitment ceremony was performed,” while LaBeouf said publicly that they were married. In September 2018 a representative announced they had filed for divorce. They reconciled in 2020, and their daughter was born in March 2022. On October 6, 2026, Goth filed for divorce in Los Angeles County Superior Court, citing irreconcilable differences, listing a July 2025 separation date and seeking primary custody; neither had commented publicly when it was reported. She keeps no public social media.
The Work, and What She Did in It
First Credits
Her screen debut was Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013), as P, a young protégée of Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Joe in the segment “The Gun.” She was 19 at its Copenhagen premiere. Small television parts followed: Sophie Campbell in three episodes of The Tunnel (2013) and Hanna Helmqvist in an episode of Wallander (2016).
Her breakthrough notice came with Stephen Fingleton’s The Survivalist (2015), a post-collapse drama that premiered at Tribeca, in which she plays Milja. She was nominated for Most Promising Newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards; the winner was Abigail Hardingham, for Nina Forever. By her own account she prepared by sleeping rough and eating very little. The same year she had a small role as Meg Weathers, the daughter of Josh Brolin’s Beck Weathers, in Baltasar Kormákur’s Everest (2015), her first studio-scale production. Everest took $203.4 million worldwide, the biggest gross on her filmography, from a supporting part.
The Auteur Run
Gore Verbinski’s gothic horror A Cure for Wellness (2016) made her the mystery at the centre of a Swiss spa: Hannah, the ward, opposite Dane DeHaan and Jason Isaacs. The film is dated 2016 by its premiere and opened in the US on February 17, 2017. Against a reported $40 million budget it took $26.6 million worldwide, a famous commercial failure that genre audiences have since reclaimed. In Sergio G. Sánchez’s English-language Spanish gothic Marrowbone (2017) she played Jane Marrowbone, opposite George MacKay and Anya Taylor-Joy.
Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria (2018), his reimagining of Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977), cast her as Sara Simms, the dancer who investigates the academy and befriends Dakota Johnson’s Susie. Asked whether she had danced before, she answered: “I hadn’t, no.” She trained for months with the choreographer Damien Jalet alongside the company’s professional dancers. “I can’t see the difference between you and the real dancers in the movie,” Guadagnino told her. Her verdict: “It’s definitely the most intense thing I’ve ever put my body through.” It premiered at Venice on September 1, 2018, divided critics, and took $7.9 million worldwide against a $20 million budget. Its ensemble shared the Robert Altman Award at the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards.
She was Boyse in Claire Denis’s space film High Life (2018), opposite Robert Pattinson; Harriet Smith in Autumn de Wilde’s Emma. (2020), opposite Anya Taylor-Joy’s Emma, a run cut short by the March 2020 cinema closures; and Marsha in Karen Cinorre’s Mayday, which premiered at Sundance in 2021.
The X Trilogy
Ti West‘s X, from A24, is set in 1979: a young crew making an adult film rents a Texas farmhouse from an elderly couple, Howard and Pearl. Goth plays both the crew’s star, Maxine Minx, and, under full prosthetics, the murderous Pearl. “It was a good 10 hours in the makeup chair, and then I’d go and do a 12-hour day on set,” she has said; the makeup artist Sarah Rubano kept the appliances and her contact lenses working through each day. The cast includes Brittany Snow, Scott Mescudi, Martin Henderson, Owen Campbell and Jenna Ortega as Lorraine. X premiered at SXSW on March 13, 2022, opened on March 18, scored 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and took about $14.7 million worldwide. Its budget is disputed: a $1 million figure was long listed, the film’s executive producer, Peter Phok, said in 2022 that it was not true, and New Zealand Film Commission rebate figures show both X and Pearl cost more than that.
Pearl exists because of a quarantine. During the cast and crew’s two-week COVID isolation in New Zealand before X shot, West and Goth wrote Pearl’s backstory as a character study, which she has described as preparation for playing the old woman. A24 greenlit it before X was finished, and it was shot in secret straight after X wrapped, on the same sets. A surprise teaser revealed it after X’s SXSW screening. Set in 1918, it gives Pearl her origin on the farm, with Goth as the sole lead and co-writer. It premiered out of competition at Venice on September 3, 2022, played TIFF’s Midnight Madness and opened in the US on September 16, 2022, taking about $9.4 million domestically and over $10 million worldwide. Late in the film she delivers a long, single-take confession monologue, described in contemporary coverage as running nearly ten minutes uncut, and it became the performance’s signature. So did the final shot: Pearl’s held, cracking smile into the end credits.
Pearl brought her the Best Actress prize at Sitges, where West won Best Director; two Critics’ Choice Super Awards, for Best Actress in a Horror Movie and Best Villain in a Movie, on March 16, 2023; a Bram Stoker Award nomination for the screenplay, shared with West; and nominations for Best Lead Performance at the Independent Spirit Awards, where Michelle Yeoh won, and from the Chicago, Online and Austin critics, plus a Saturn Award nomination. It drew no Oscar nomination, and she said publicly that the Academy’s attitude toward horror was “very political,” not based only on a film’s quality.
MaXXXine closes the trilogy in 1985 Los Angeles, with Maxine chasing legitimate stardom while the Night Stalker murders fill the news. It was announced with a post-credits teaser at Pearl’s Midnight Madness screening, premiered at the TCL Chinese Theatre on June 24, 2024, and opened on July 5, 2024, when she was 30. The new cast includes Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Sophie Thatcher, Giancarlo Esposito and Kevin Bacon, and Goth is credited among its producers. It drew the trilogy’s softest notices and was its biggest earner, at $22.1 million worldwide. West floated a possible fourth film in February 2024; none has been announced.
Infinity Pool
Between the second and third films came Brandon Cronenberg‘s Infinity Pool, in which she plays Gabi Bauer opposite Alexander Skarsgård and Cleopatra Coleman. It premiered in Sundance’s Midnight section in January 2023 and opened on January 27, 2023. The MPA first rated it NC-17; after Neon appealed, the film was re-edited to an R, a version Cronenberg said “isn’t hugely different.” It took $5.2 million worldwide.
Frankenstein and the Studio Phase
In Guillermo del Toro‘s Frankenstein (2025) for Netflix, with Oscar Isaac as Victor, Jacob Elordi as the Creature and Christoph Waltz, she plays two roles: Lady Elizabeth Harlander, engaged to Victor’s younger brother William and the object of Victor’s fixation, and Baroness Claire Frankenstein, Victor’s mother, who dies giving birth to William. The doubling binds the two women together in Victor’s mind. Goth has said it began when she told del Toro about becoming a mother during early conversations about Elizabeth: “In that moment, I saw Guillermo’s eyes light up… I wonder if, in that moment, he started to merge Elizabeth and Claire together for the first time.” The film premiered at Venice on August 30, 2025, opened in limited US theatres on October 17 and arrived on Netflix on November 7, 2025, on a reported $120 million budget. It received nine Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Elordi. Goth’s own notices were an AACTA International nomination for Best Supporting Actress and a share of the SAG ensemble nomination.
In Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, released in July 2026, she plays Melantho, the disloyal maidservant who betrays Penelope’s weaving ruse to the suitors, opposite Matt Damon’s Odysseus and Anne Hathaway’s Penelope, with Logan Marshall-Green as her twin brother, Melanthius. Next is Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighter, written by Jonathan Tropper and led by Ryan Gosling, in which she is one of the villains alongside Matt Smith; it shot in the UK from August 28 to December 2025 and is dated for May 28, 2027.
One credit that will not happen: Marvel’s Blade. She was reported in April 2023 as its villain, Lilith. The film lost two directors, came off Disney’s release calendar in October 2024, and was reported dead in January 2026, although she said in October 2025 that she was still attached. In July 2026 Mahershala Ali said he had moved on. She never filmed a frame of it.
Cool Verified Facts
- Her full name is Mia Gypsy Mello da Silva Goth.
- She never won the BIFA for The Survivalist; she was nominated, and Stephen Fingleton won the Douglas Hickox Award for the same film.
- Pearl’s Bram Stoker nomination was for writing, not acting.
- She was not a Gotham Awards nominee for Pearl.
- In Frankenstein she is Elizabeth Harlander, not the novel’s Elizabeth Lavenza.
- Pearl was shot in New Zealand with the Avatar crew, who were then on a break.
- Her largest box office, Everest, came from a small supporting role.
Signatures, Habits and Behind the Scenes
The pattern across her horror work is physical commitment: rough sleeping for The Survivalist, by her account; a non-dancer dancing beside a professional company in Suspiria; whole working days given to prosthetics in X. She keeps her private life out of view and lets the transformations do the talking.
She also writes her characters from the inside. Pearl began as backstory written in quarantine for the old woman in X, and she ended up with a screenwriting credit and a Bram Stoker nomination for it.
Profiles have dubbed her a scream queen in nearly every piece since X. It is the label that follows her, and her filmography is where it comes from: von Trier, Verbinski, Guadagnino, West, Cronenberg and del Toro.
Why She Matters
Goth is that rare thing in modern horror, an actor who co-wrote her own monster: she played Pearl at the end of her life under ten hours of prosthetics, then went back with West and wrote the character’s beginning, and the result was a prequel that won her Sitges, two Critics’ Choice Super Awards and a Spirit nomination.
The X trilogy made her one of the defining faces of A24-era horror, and she has kept going toward bigger rooms without leaving the genre behind: Guadagnino’s Suspiria, Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, and a doubled role at the heart of del Toro’s Frankenstein, a Best Picture nominee.