Samatha Morton felt like she’d been chosen for the Olympics when she was cast in The Odyssey.
Samantha Morton has won praise for her role in The Odyssey
The 49-year-old actress plays the sorceress Circe in the epic blockbuster, which also stars Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Robert Pattinson, and she admitted being asked just to audition for director Sir Christopher Nolan felt validating.
She explained to The Sunday Times’ Culture magazine: “It feels like the Olympics. Chris is picking his squad and after years of working I’ve finally been picked for a team.
“You have to be the best of the best to work for him — and you know me, I’ve been cracking on for years, but I wanted to audition for him for ages and it was not happening.
“Even thinking about meeting him makes me want to cry. It validates that I must be good at what I do.”
Samantha was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for In America in 2003 and Best Supporting Actress for 1999’s Sweet and Lowdown, and won critical acclaim in Stephen Spielberg’s Minority Report, but she thinks she’s hit her best now.
She said: “It was a different time. Now my skills and ability have matured and I feel like I am the best I’ve ever been.
“I don’t perhaps look the best I’ve ever looked — I’m a 49-year-old woman who has never had facials or anything like that. I try to go to a gym if time permits but I have children, dogs, a mortgage — a real life.
“I’ve never entered that Hollywood world. I lived in Derbyshire for years and now live near Hastings.
“I just hope I get another job.”
Circe’s blistering monologue to Odysseus is one of the highlights of the movie, and Samantha – who has Esme, 26, with former partner Charlie Creed-Miles, and Edie, 18, and 12-year-old Theodore with partner Harry Holm – was speaking for all the women in her life, and the females who have been wronged over the years.
She said: “These weren’t just words. I believe them as Sam, not just Circe.
“And when I opened my mouth I was every woman. I was speaking for my mother, who suffered all sorts at the hands of men. And my sister, friends, grandmother. It was all the wrongs and ways that women have been depicted or treated for ever — from the Whore of Babylon onwards.
“Yet, I also had unbelievable sympathy [for the soldiers], because my stepdad and brother were in the military and therefore have witnessed and probably been party to things we cannot even imagine. So I thought about PTSD, Don McCullin’s photo of the shellshocked soldier.
“Because if Circe is all women, then she is also a mother. So there was anger, but also empathy.”