Mia Goth prefers to live on the edge

IT'S ONE OF THE MOST INDELIBLE IMAGES IN recent cinema: "Please, I'm a star!" wails the title character of Ti West's 2022 cult horror film, Pearl, after she's been rejected for a role at an audition.

- RICH JUZWIAK

But the actor behind Pearl cuts the precise negative of that widely memed viral image inside a Manhattan production studio one evening in mid-June. "I don't feel famous at all," says Mia Goth. This despite having worked with auteurs like Luca Guadagnino and Lars von Trier (2013's Nymphomaniac was her debut); despite a bevy of accolades for her alternately fragile and furious work in Pearl; and despite the paparazzi shots of her walking in L.A. with the father of her child, Shia LaBeouf, published days earlier. All of which is to say nothing of the hot anticipation for MaXXXine, out July 5, ostensibly the last film in the series that began with 2022's slasher X, continued with prequel Pearl, and made Goth one of the preeminent contemporary scream queens.