Samantha Morton, 49, says she has not worked in a year since filming The Odyssey, a gap she believes is tied to her age. The actress is now an Oscar frontrunner for her performance as the witch Circe in the film.
Morton has been receiving awards buzz for playing Circe, the being who transforms Odysseus' starving soldiers into pigs in a memorable, 10-minute scene. Despite having what she called 'really good agents' and a manager supporting her career, Morton said she has failed to land any roles since filming wrapped.
'I haven't worked for a year since making The Odyssey, you know, and I've got really good agents and a manager, but at the end of the day, I'm 49,' she said on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast. 'I do believe I'm a good actor, there are other good actors out there. Do you know what I mean? So, the politics of the industry has changed massively.'
Confidence in her future
Despite the lull, Morton said she has faith she will keep working into her 80s. 'So what this means to me - first of all, regardless of carrying on working, which I feel confident that you know with the ups and the downs, I will keep working, till I'm in my 80s or whatever touch wood,' she said.
For now, Morton said she is content simply to have worked with director Christopher Nolan, whose 2006 film The Prestige she once desperately wanted to audition for. 'But it's more that for me, I got to work with Christopher Nolan in my lifetime. That's it. I'm happy now,' she said.
'I was happy before I've worked with some brilliant people but you're always at the mercy as an actor of who your employer is and what they expect of you and what they believe in you to do for them,' she said. 'And without sounding corny, I genuinely cried when I got the call from my team saying, "Christopher Nolan would like to meet you."'
Long wait for a Nolan role
Morton told Entertainment Weekly she had wanted to audition for The Prestige years earlier. 'I remember years ago when he was making The Prestige,' she said, 'and wanting an audition so badly for that movie.' She recalled telling her agent, 'But I was a magician's assistant for real!'
Describing taking on the role of Circe, Morton told The Hollywood Reporter: 'I left school at 12 and started acting at that age. I'm not highly educated. I didn't know the source material. I was just going by the script which blew my mind. I was sobbing, I was angry. I can't really remember it in its entirety other than there was a day when I was with the pigs. I got into the zone and I was lost.'
Early career and breakthrough roles
At 13, Morton joined the Central Junior Television Workshop, where her talent was noticed, earning her TV roles including in Soldier Soldier and Cracker. Despite those early roles, she found herself homeless after moving to London from Nottingham at age 16, sleeping rough at St Pancras station.
At 18, she won the role that made her name, playing teenage prostitute Tracy Richards in Kay Mellor's drama Band Of Gold. In 1997 she took the lead role in the independent drama Under the Skin, playing Iris, a woman coping with her mother's death. Impressed by that performance, Woody Allen cast her in his 1999 movie Sweet And Lowdown, for which she received an Oscar nomination. She became a Hollywood name in 2002 after starring alongside Tom Cruise in Minority Report.
