The scene Mia Goth was “really terrified” to shoot: “I didn’t have any tools”
Go back in time, and all the top actors of a generation came through prestigious schools or intense studio training. Now, the best talents crop up from nowhere. Mia Goth is the perfect example.
Goth was a teenager at a festival when a random model scout approached her and changed her life, landing her in the pages of Vogue. However, that wasn’t what she wanted.
Instead, she got what she wanted at 17; she stood outside an audition room, panic eating a Burger King as she told ELLE. It’s incredible to think about, really. Here was this teenager bolding about to audition for Lars Von Trier with absolutely no formal training, just passion and guts.
That’s likely what got her the part in Nymphomaniac, and likely what has made her career since then so remarkable.
When watching Goth in some of her best roles, there is always the sense that the performances she’s given would be unteachable. She manages to capture emotion in such an honest way, with a palpable naivety to it. She seems to come to her characters organically, rather than through specific techniques or teachings. Instead, she meets them on a human level and gets to understand them deeply from the romanticism of Harriet Smith in Emma, to the morbid maternal streak of Elizabeth Harlander, her role in Frankenstein
It makes her captivating, but it also makes Goth herself scared to some degree. She was terrified walking into that first audition room, and it seems that the sense of being the untrained newbie has never quiet faded despite the legacy she’s already created for herself.
However, that too likely makes her great. Keeping her on her toes, these new challenges push Goth forward, bringing out some of her finest performances as the scenes feel raw and real, powered by her own fear and turned into something incredible.
The clearest example for that comes in the form of her most staggering on-screen moment. Ti West’s entire X trilogy is a masterclass in Goth’s talent as she played both Maxine Minx and Pearl, two women embodying an unbridled yet clearly anxious drive to make something of themselves. While X and MaXXXine capture it in a thrilling, seductive, slasher package, the middle movie, Pearl, co-written with Goth, is more nuanced.
Goth clearly had a deep sense of care towards Pearl as a character, given that she stepped onto the writing team to ensure it was done well. But despite having the most control over that movie than any of her others, it was also the one that scared her most as its climactic scene felt like something she was utterly unprepared for.
It’s magnetic. Goth delivers a monologue, admitting to all of Pearl’s evil deeds all while still making the audience love her, relate to her and almost empathise with her as her insecurities and fears pour out. It’s most sinister and devastating, and it scared Goth.
“I was really terrified to shoot that, because I never went to film school,” she said. For the first time, she suddenly felt panicked that she perhaps didn’t have the knowledge to handle a moment like this. ““I didn’t have any tools to gear myself up to something like that,” she explained, and so, like all her other roles, she decided to do it organically, keeping this moment until the very end of the shoot so she could go on the emotional journey with the character and feel the feeling naturally.
“That was a great move, because the emotional turbulence Pearl had gone through up until that point, and the intensity of what that shoot required from everyone, helped and informed the monologue that that came that day,” she explained as she simply let her heart lead, bringing her to another incredible moment and further proof that some talent can’t be taught.
