How Mia Goth found true happiness on the set of ‘Nymphomaniac’
The breakthrough of Mia Goth‘s acting career really arrived in 2022 when she took the lead role in Ti West’s slasher horror movies X and Pearl, following up with a performance in Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool. It’s fair to say that Goth has contributed significantly to the horror genre, especially when considering that she’s already featured in Luca Guadagnino’s remake of Dario Argento’s beloved movie Suspiria.
But, like every actor, Goth’s career needed to start somewhere, and hers began with a performance in Lars von Trier’s 2013 erotic arthouse film Nymphomaniac, which boasts a wildly impressive cast including the likes of Charlotte Gainsbourg, Stellan Skarsgård, Shia LaBeouf, Christian Slater, Uma Thurman and Willem Dafoe, to name but a few.
Despite still being in her teens and performing in such an intensely erotic movie, Goth once explained that she felt at home on the set of Von Trier’s film. She told the Irish Times: “I wasn’t nervous at all. Well, maybe on the first morning on the drive there.”
“I was 18 years old. And at 18, you are completely fearless,” she added. “I desperately wanted to be on that set. It was my first movie, and I had been auditioning for two years. I knew who Lars was and the sort of films that he made, and I was just so hungry for that. One of the happiest times in my life was on that set.”
Nymphomaniac follows a self-diagnosed sex-addicted person called Joe (played by Gainsbourg and Stacey Martin), who tells her previous erotic endeavours to a bachelor who is currently helping her overcome a recent assault. Von Trier details Joe’s life through eight chapters, going from her adolescence to her adulthood.
Goth admitted that her parents are big fans of von Trier and are “very liberally thinking” about her performing in such roles. “They were more than happy for me to be in the film,” she said. “I wasn’t going into all the details all the time, but they trusted me, and they trusted Lars.”
“I think it probably helps that the friends that I grew up with are not in the industry at all,” Goth added, responding to a question about what her peers thought about her on-screen “defilings”.
“They like films,” the actor added, “But they don’t really understand the impact that Lars von Trier has had on cinema. They just thought it was cool.”
Check out the trailer for Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac below.
