FRANKENSTEIN Star Mia Goth Covers ELLE’s November Issue

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In an exclusive interview with ELLE Culture Writer Lauren Puckett-Pope, Mia Goth opens up about moving from small-but-mighty genre films to major studio projects, including Guillermo del Toro’s FRANKENSTEIN, Christopher Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY, Shawn Levy’s STAR WARS: STARFIGHTER, and the long-awaited BLADE reboot.

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On stepping into a bigger spotlight and working with the most in-demand names in the industry: “It’s given me a lot of strength, actually,” she says. “To trust myself, to be a little less scared of the world. It’s empowering, having the opportunity to work at this level.”

On how she copes with Hollywood’s pressures: “I’m not the kind of actor who’s unable to shake it off at the end of the day,” she says. “With a daughter, that’s just not realistic.” She has no social media; she doesn’t read comments. It’s “completely irrelevant” whatever people might claim about her online. “I have quite a thick skin in that sense,” she continues. “I have a good life. I’m happy. So things like that don’t affect me.”

On the ongoing lawsuit against her by MaXXXine background actor James Hunter: “I’m unable to speak to any of that at the moment, but I think if anyone was to do a simple search, they would see what the facts are,” Goth says. “They can draw their own conclusions. It’s still an ongoing process.”

On how she navigated the challenges of an unstable upbringing: During that period, she found herself fabricating stories about her background, telling classmates that her mom was a brain surgeon or that she was a descendant of Vincent van Gogh. She’d pore over IKEA catalogs, selecting bedrooms and kitchens to fill the homes of fictional characters she created in her mind— “alter egos,” she calls them—to cope with the reality of her childhood. “There was this scarcity mind frame,” Goth explains. “We were going from one place to another, but nothing was ever really ours and nothing was ever permanent. And I was so desperately yearning for a home.” The stories she made up seemed safer. They felt like acting; they felt like play. “I think they made me feel more in control, as though I wasn’t just a passenger to the situation that was taking place. I can talk about it now because I’m so removed from it. But at the time, there was a lot of shame.”

On revisiting her childhood from a new perspective: Goth says she “definitely has more empathy” for her own mother’s struggles. “For a long time, I would’ve done anything to have changed the situation I was in,” she says. “But, now, looking back on it, I’m proud of what I come from and what we went through and that we were able to survive that. I wouldn’t change any of it.”

On how her childhood informs her parenting: “More than anything, I’d say my daughter is my home,” she says. Goth is fiercely protective of Isabel, the child she shares with fellow actor Shia LaBeouf.

For Isabel’s well-being as much as her own, the actress wants to reconcile the feelings of displacement that still dog her. “It’s something that I’m trying to work through and understand more deeply, so that it’s not something I give to my daughter,” she says. “If you feel comfortable within yourself, you’re going to feel good anywhere. Because wherever you go, you’re going to be confronted with yourself eventually.”

On what she hopes to be for her daughter: “I really hope to be something steady for her,” she says. “That no matter what happens in her life, she can return to me. No matter what her age—if she’s in a sh**ty relationship or something’s not going right at work—she can always come home. And she’ll always have a bed to sleep in and a home-cooked meal.”

On filming Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and how motherhood shaped her role: Goth says, though it was equally “special.” She recalls “walking onto that set and being so nervous I could feel my heart beating in my body.” She’d brought Isabel on location with her, “and I didn’t really have the right help in place,” she says. Yet the balancing act gave her insight into Elizabeth, who—despite having no children of her own—serves a maternal role for both Victor and the Creature, a.k.a. Frankenstein’s monster.

Goth is careful to clarify that “I wouldn’t want to say that I couldn’t have done this job if I hadn’t been a mother. But I think becoming a mother informed a lot of my choices, and enriched the process.” The actress says she has known she wanted to be a mom from age 3. “It’s a really psychedelic experience to have a child. You’re parenting her, but you’re also parenting the version of you that existed when you were that age. The amount of love that you can feel.…” Goth trails off and offers a warm smile. “She’s the greatest gift of my life.”

On the long-delayed Blade reboot: Goth confirms she’s still attached. She has no update on the film’s beleaguered production, saying only, “It’s for the best that it’s taken the time that it has. They want to do it right.”

On preparing for her role in Star Wars: Starfighter: “It’s really intense, but I love it,” Goth says. “I’m being pushed in a way that I’ve never been pushed before…. This is a completely separate film, not a prequel. It’s its own thing, with new characters. And it’s a great script, a really great script.” Of casting Goth’s role, Starfighter director Levy told me, “We needed a singular actor to play a fiercely complex new character within the Star Wars galaxy. Mia is a unicorn of an actress. It’s not like you could ever say, ‘We need a Mia Goth type,’ because there is no type. There’s just Mia.”

Mia Goth covers the November 2025 issue of ELLE, on newsstands November 4.

Story by: Lauren Puckett-Pope
Photographed by: Willy Vanderperre
Styled by: Paul Sinclaire

[Photo Credit: Willy Vanderperre for ELLE Magazine]

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