Mia Goth on Reaching the End of the ‘X’ Trilogy

Don’t call her a scream queen.

Mia Goth may have amassed a filmography dominated by horror films like “A Cure for Wellness,” “Suspiria” and “Infinity Pool,” but she prefers not to limit herself.

“I don’t want to be boxed in,” the 30-year-old actress from London said in a video interview. “I want to do everything.” Still, her work involves a fair bit of screaming, and she is quite good at it.

The “X” trilogy is no exception. Directed by Ti West, the films follow the lives and crimes of Pearl and Maxine, both played by Goth. As we meet them in the first movie, “X,” Pearl (Goth under a pound of prosthetics) is a sexually deprived older woman with murderous tendencies, and Maxine is a young porn actress who dreams of making it big. They meet when Maxine arrives at a farm for an adult film production being shot there, but their hosts, Pearl and her husband, clash with the crew and things get bloody quickly. The second entry, titled after the main character, serves as Pearl’s origin story, and brought Goth greater recognition for her bold, meme-able performance. The third, “MaXXXine” (in theaters), picks up with its title character in Hollywood when she finally catches a break. All are anchored by Goth’s work, which remains deeply sincere even as it grows delightfully unhinged.

Mia Goth says her “confidence as a performer is probably what evolved more than anything” from “X” to “MaXXXine.”Credit…Amy Harrity for The New York Times

Distributed by A24, each movie riffs on different styles and eras, with “X,” playing off ’70s exploitation cinema, “Pearl” paying homage to early Technicolor melodramas and “MaXXXine” taking on the ’80s B-movie slasher.

In a wide-ranging interview, Goth spoke about working on the trilogy and filming shortly after the birth of her daughter, now about 2, with Shia LaBeouf.