Samantha Morton, who appears for barely ten minutes of Christopher Nolan's three-hour epic The Odyssey, has emerged as a surprise contender for next year's Best Supporting Actress Oscar. The 49-year-old actress, who began her career as a magician's assistant, plays the sorceress Circe in the hit film, which is closing on a billion dollars worldwide.
A Contemporary Take on a Classic Villain
Morton, born in Nottingham, reads Circe not as the villain of Homer's poem but as a woman punished by history for what she knew rather than what she did. "I think that women in history have often been vilified, whether you're a midwife, a wise woman," she tells The Arts Hour on the BBC World Service. "We think about kind of the burning of women at the stake, because they were herbalists, you know, and I don't think Circe is a baddie at all."
Her interpretation came straight off the page, she says, and she wanted Circe to be far more than just a villain. "Villains are always amazing roles, but I did want to make her a little bit more. My interpretation was what I read on the script, which was phenomenal, and it was multi-layered, because we are, as humans; we're not just two-dimensional."
Star-Studded Co-Stars and Confidence
Morton's co-stars in The Odyssey include Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, and Charlize Theron. She has shared sets with even bigger names over the years, but says the company has never once fazed her. "I've worked with some of those big names before, whether it's Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Joaquin Phoenix. My history is that I can, you know … Nottingham lass can hold her own. I'm not intimidated by anybody really, because if you let those nerves get in the way you can't do your job."
The Odyssey was shot on 70mm IMAX cameras, built specially for the production, and the format left her giddy. "Whether you're working on 35mm or, in this case, it was 70mm IMAX, which they built specially for the film, it's just I'm buzzing like a kid in a sweet shop."
From Care System to Oscar Contender
That confidence was hard won during a Nottingham childhood of care orders and foster homes. "I was taken into care as a baby," she said. Her parents could not cope, her father was in and out of prison, and she moved with him between home and the care system, never settling anywhere for long. By 16, she was living alone in a homeless hostel, where she wrote her first play. A drama workshop leader gave her the train fare to London to audition for a television part, and within the week she had the role, an agent, and her breakthrough in Band of Gold. "Acting saved my life," she said.
Standout Performance and Oscar Buzz
Nolan has said her performance of Circe stopped the set, and that after one of her takes the crew broke into a great round of applause. The only other time he had seen that, he said, was with Heath Ledger on The Dark Knight, who won a posthumous Oscar in 2009. Critics have called her Circe the standout of a film wall to wall with stars, with one writing that she runs away with the whole picture; another that a long overlooked actress had finally been handed a role worthy of her.
Her co-star Matt Damon said she was so locked in that she carried the pair of them with her, and that shooting their scenes together, "we all knew we were watching something special."
A Brief but Historic Role
Should the Oscar come, Morton would be in select company. Anthony Hopkins won Best Actor for just over 16 minutes as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. Dame Judi Dench took Best Supporting Actress for around eight minutes as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, and Beatrice Straight won the same prize in 1976 for little more than five minutes in Network.
Past Battles and Future Outlook
Morton has been nominated twice before, for Sweet and Lowdown in 2000 and In America in 2004, but the years in between have not always been kind. She has said Harvey Weinstein once called her "unf***able," and that turning down the 2000 Miramax film About Adam, which she found sexist, left her frozen out for years afterwards. When she refused, she said, a casting director warned her that 'you do not say no to Harvey.' But the disgraced producer is now serving a long prison sentence for sex crimes. And she has never looked back. "At the end of the day, I'm 49. I do believe I'm a good actor," she said. "There are other good actors out there."
For all the Oscar talk, she said the reward was the work itself, and a place in something built to last. "Being part of something that's bigger than any individual is really important in this day and age, because we're living in the age of the I, the me, the Instagram, the selfie, the ego. And The Odyssey is the opposite of that."
This interview can be heard in full on The Arts Hour, available on BBC Sounds.
