Samantha Morton has revealed her sister died in April at the age of 53, just 18 months after she lost her biological father. The actress, 49, said she is “still dealing with the coroners and the trauma.”
“I sadly lost my sister on April 22 this year, she was 53,” Morton told The Sunday Times. “I lost my real father 18 months ago. Trauma. So the past is always with me and I’m not saying I’m not going to be all right next week, but every day I wake, say a prayer and say ‘Please help me.'”
Morton, who appears in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and is tipped for an Oscar, is one of nine siblings. She spent most of her childhood in foster homes after her parents separated when she was two. Her biological father was an alcoholic who spent time in prison, and her stepfather, who died in 2007, was also an alcoholic who served prison time for attempted murder.
“Someone told me I was resilient when I was younger but sometimes you’ve got no choice other than to be resilient because if you’re not, you’re dead,” she said.
A Childhood Shaped by Trauma
After her parents split, Morton lived with her abusive father while her mother, a factory worker, was in a relationship with another man. At eight, she was placed with several foster families, and she and her siblings were, in her words, “passed like an unwanted parcel” between care homes.
She was made a Ward of Court due to her mother’s neglect and her father’s violence. As an adult, she revealed she had been sexually abused by residential care workers at 13 and that police took no action when she reported it.
Morton also dealt with serious health setbacks, including injuries from a car accident at 12 and a stroke at 30 after a ceiling collapsed on her, forcing an 18-month break from acting to relearn how to walk and talk.
Saved by Acting
Morton has long credited acting with saving her life. At 13 she joined the Central Junior Television Workshop. Despite early TV roles, she found herself homeless after moving to London from Nottingham at 16, sleeping rough at St Pancras station.
At 18 she won the role of teenage prostitute Tracy Richards in the TV drama Band Of Gold. Woody Allen later cast her in his 1999 film Sweet and Lowdown, earning her an Oscar nomination, and she became a Hollywood name in 2002 starring in Minority Report alongside Tom Cruise.
Reflecting on 30 years in the industry, Morton said it was “an absolute miracle I’m not dead,” citing friends who have died or taken their own lives due to the effects of trauma.
In 2024 she dedicated her Bafta Fellowship “to every child in care, or who has been in care and who didn’t survive.” She is mother to three children: Esmé Creed-Miles with actor Charlie Creed-Miles, and Edie and Theodore with filmmaker Harry Holm, her partner of over two decades.
