How Samantha Morton Pulled Off Her Wild ‘The Odyssey’ Performance as Circe: “I Wanted to Possess It”

[This story contains spoilers for Christopher Nolan‘s The Odyssey.]

For a film stacked with A-listers like Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya and Tom Holland, one actor took up a surprising chunk of The Odyssey’s pre-release buzz: Samantha Morton. This was due in large part to director Christopher Nolan himself. “There are no limitations on her performance,” the Oscar-winning filmmaker told The Los Angeles Times earlier this month. “After one of her takes, the crew gave her a great round of applause…. The last time that had happened [in one of my movies] was with Heath Ledger on The Dark Knight.” You can’t hype up a performance much more than that.

Fortunately, Morton lives up to it. In a barnburning sequence as Circe, the witch goddess from Aeaea, the actress all but transforms the energy of the entire, massive film. Circe welcomes the survivors among Odysseus’s men who have washed up on a mysterious beach and seek refuge. Sensing their feral desperation, she promptly turns them all into pigs — a sequence achieved by Nolan with dazzling practicality. It’s only after Odysseus (Damon) himself kills a man disguised as a deer that he convinces her to change them back. She then, in a monologue delivered with singular verve by Morton, lays out the dangerous path for him to return to Ithaca and reunite with his family.

Morton, a British native who’s been acting since age 12, has pulled off a dynamic and varied career over three-plus decades, earning Oscar noms for her supporting role in Sweet and Lowdown and lead turn in In America. More recently, she’s balanced title roles in TV projects like The Serpent Queen with smaller roles on the big screen, taking charge of awards contenders like The Whale and She Said with just a few minutes to make her presence count. But The Odyssey feels different — the moment to recognize the power of an actor who’s made a habit of this kind of scene-stealing work. Indeed, watching the way Nolan captures Circe’s mystical sequence would be unforgettable in its own right. That Morton still manages to stand out to the degree that she does says it all.

Below, she speaks with The Hollywood Reporter about how her career led her to such a moment with The Odyssey.

Let’s start with how you came to play Circe. What was your path to getting the part?

I’m very lucky. I’ve been acting since I was 12, but I’ve been with my agents really since I was 19 — and I’m 49, so it’s a very long time. They’re always rooting for me and suggesting me to casting directors for things. Maybe they’d said something to John Papsidera. It’s every actor’s dream to work with Christopher Nolan or to get an opportunity to meet him. I don’t know what happened behind the scenes, but I know that I got a phone call to say that “Christopher Nolan would like to meet you,” and I cried. I was like, “Wow, really?” I didn’t even know what the project was when I met him, so it was all a surprise.

I also didn’t know the source material. I didn’t know The Odyssey. I hadn’t read it in school because of being a child actor; I didn’t go to school, or I’d missed my schooling really from 12 years old. Obviously I was familiar with the title, and I’d seen an episode of The Simpsons where they did a parody on The Odyssey. But the script blew me away and I was just so moved at how contemporary it felt. I had my interpretation of Circe, and then speaking to Chris, hoping that that was going to work, I didn’t know that I was going to get the part. When I got the role, I was just so excited to deliver for Chris and [producer] Emma [Thomas] to inhabit what my instinct was.

How would you describe that interpretation? I’m curious how you conceive of this character, this scene, when he first presents you with the role, and how it then evolves once you start digging in.

I did a bit of research into the source material and I bought the Madeline Miller book [Circe]. But I opened that book and then something just stopped me from reading it. The thing about me and my work is, my relationship to a movie script or a play or a TV episode or whatever I’m doing — that’s my special thing. Research is incredibly important for me, but it also depends on who I’m playing. Years ago, I was about 19 years old and I was playing Jane Eyre. It was a big ITV production. It was a TV movie, but they’d spent a lot of money on it. I remember literally carrying the book around with me like the Bible, with passages highlighted and all my notes, and talking to the person who adapted it and going, “Why isn’t this there? This doesn’t make sense.” I was almost in conflict with the script, which was very good, because I had issues with the choices. I vowed to myself moving forward that, while you have to do your research, you have to know what you’re doing, I didn’t want to be bogged down by everybody else’s interpretation, view, opinion, anything.

Here I just was very old-fashioned. I went, “I’m making this movie, and this is the character here on this page. This is what I have.” My instinct was I felt that she was incredibly contemporary. I could identify with her. She felt like my sister, my mother, my gran, my aunt, my neighbor. She felt very real and very condensed. I talk about the essential will of Circe. It’s absolutely extraordinary what Chris has done with all of the women in the film. She just feels so whole, so fully realized yet you’re not there with her for an incredibly long amount of time. In that short timeframe, there’s a lot to achieve, I think. But it doesn’t feel rushed. It doesn’t feel forced. It feels that she’s every woman. She’s all of us. I just really connected with that. I thought that I would bring, for want of a better word, myself into it. I just wanted to own it. I wanted to possess it and own it and be it.

There’s a lot to this scene and it has a big place in this film. What did that look like for you internally to take charge, as you say, on such an epic production?

I think it’s how I approach life. I grew up in the foster-care system, children’s homes, and I was never really welcome in normal society because we were considered scum. People didn’t really understand our stories, but nonetheless, we were labeled scum. I had to fight just to have a voice or to be relevant. A lot of kids are written off in that way. When I was very little, in order to just be in a room with other people that were maybe better-educated or came from a normal family, I always used to think: “I have a right to be here. I’m a human being. I have a right to be here. We’re all just as important as each other.”

I imagine that’s been a theme across your career.

When I got my first play at the Royal Court, I would’ve been 16 years old. People would say, “Are you nervous?” And I said, “No, why?” I said, “Well, if it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t matter. I’ve had a go.” Obviously, I’m nervous about, in a healthy way, the adrenaline of what I’m doing or not letting anybody else down and delivering the goods. But ultimately I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ve got everything to give and nothing to lose. When I arrived on the Minority Report film set, there’s Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg, and yes, they’re extraordinary human beings with what they’ve achieved in their careers — but they’re people and we’re all there to do a job. You have to just park all of that outside reality stuff at the door, walk in and do the job. The best job we possibly can. I’ve always been like that. So I didn’t get intimidated by the fact it was a Christopher Nolan movie, or that there was money being spent, or there was Matt Damon, because we’re all human beings and we’re all lucky to be making movies, quite frankly.

How many days did you actually shoot that sequence in The Odyssey?

It wasn’t very long. Or it wasn’t long enough for me! I just didn’t want to leave. I was thinking, “Could I be an extra? Could I help the sound department? Be a caterer?” I think I was there for about 10 days, more or less. It wasn’t that I didn’t have long enough to perform. It was just over very quickly — I was like, “Oh no, I’m so sad.” (Laughs.)

What excited you about the actual filming of it, knowing how otherworldly the scene gets?

The entire script was very complex, but equally had an incredible amount of heart. It felt like a page turner. I didn’t feel lost in it, which is saying something considering the amount of characters and what was going on. I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about what they were going to do. I was just excited about what they were going to do and how they were going to do it.

My stepdad had a dodgy video store, which he shouldn’t have had, but it was a lot of horror that wasn’t allowed to be released in England. I grew up watching a lot of horror and I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Things like The Evil Dead. And equally as a child, loving things like The NeverEnding Story or The Dark Crystal — Jim Henson and puppetry and wanting to be either a princess or a baddie. Growing up, I wanted to be Darth Vader…. So when I read the script, I was just really excited about how we were going to do that and what I was able to contribute. I loved the magic of it all.

It’s an amazing sequence to watch, visually. I understand Circe turning the men into pigs was accomplished practically. How did you experience that?

I don’t know because I was just in the moment all the time. Chris and Emma gave me a lot of prep, really kind and considerate. What do you need? Any questions? Prep is everything. Asking all the questions before, nothing being a surprise, making sure that you can hit the ground running. Filmmaking is extraordinary in regards to the coming together of lots of different elements and hoping it works. Sometimes it doesn’t work and you hope it does. In this instance, I felt it worked. Yeah. I was just kind of in Circe mode. No disrespect to anybody, but I wasn’t worrying or overthinking about what was going on around me. I just wanted to get it right within Circe.

It’s interesting though, because there is obviously a bizarre, mystical thing happening within that scene — that you can stay so centered where that’s not even as much of a focus for you surprises me.

That scene in particular, I felt that I needed to almost forget the fact I was on a film set and forget the fact that I was working with the practicalities of special effects and become one with it. I suppose like a puppeteer. Look at War Horse, and I was talking about Dark Crystal and NeverEnding Story, people inhabiting characters. For me, it was becoming one with, for lack of a better word, Circe’s creations. They were of her, part of her, and it was an extension of her mind. I was just in the zone.

Did you surprise yourself, then, in how you approached it? Anything specifically that you recall?

I didn’t mean to hum. I didn’t think I was going to hum. (Laughs.) Or sing or whatever I did. That surprised me. I didn’t know that was going to happen. But then again, I don’t know what’s going to happen ever. I have an idea in my head. It’s like when we read a book that we love and we see the characters and they just feel so personal. Or like when you’re trying to remember a dream that was so vivid at the time and you can’t quite remember it, but you remember enough to go, “And this happened and that happened.” If you are asked to go into any detail, was there color? Can you smell it? What was the eye-color of whoever you were talking about? As an actor, I always try to be as in the moment as I possibly can be without being disrespectful to others. You have to always have one ear out for whatever’s happening technically on the set. You can’t be completely selfish that you’re gone and it’s all about you. It’s a collaboration as well. But that did make me go, “Oh, I don’t remember that.”

When you watched it, you mean?

Yeah, I’d been told about it, but I’d forgotten it. You just move forward in life, don’t you? The filmmakers are living with it every day in the edit, or if you’ve written something and you’re directing it and making it. But it’s a very different world as an actor.

It’s the last role I’ve done, though. I haven’t done anything since The Odyssey. I’ve been writing a screenplay and I make music, so I’ve been in my music world. It’s very lovely to revisit it.

It sounds like you were a good fit, though, for the way Nolan likes to work: He’s very involved with his actors in advance of filming, and then he lets them run.

Absolutely. But at the same time, the safety and the respect and the trust — there was never a note that I got where I didn’t believe it. He was with me, totally with me in those scenes. Oftentimes, even brilliant directors can give you a note and you’re like, “Really? Oh, okay.”  You do it and you go, “Oh, that didn’t feel right,” but you do it because it’s your job and you hope that you’re making the director happy. But every single note, every single bit of guidance felt completely poignant and relevant and right and made me better. If you’re working with somebody brilliant, it makes you better. If you trust them and let them guide you and let them be brilliant at what they do, we all get better.

I think of you as an actor who shows what can be done in a short amount of time on screen. A few years ago, both She Said and The Whale came out, and you had single scenes in both of these films that were so explosive, and that rejiggered the whole chemistry of the film. That’s a unique challenge for any actor that you’ve been given a few times.

That’s a really lovely way of putting it. I think that I’m reliable, maybe? They know I’m good for it. I’ll give it 150 percent, but also I’m really aware it’s not about me. Maybe that kind of sense of church and family and us all being together in one — that I don’t bring any baggage, I suppose. I just turn up with a little bag and get on with it and then go away. I oftentimes don’t get involved in the other stuff. I just love acting. If I’m lucky enough to play Catherine de’ Medici as the lead in The Serpent Queen, or in Harlots, and then Anemone with Daniel Day Lewis’ first screenplay? I think I’m a good egg. I’ll turn up, do the work and be happy with that, thank you.

Chris has been highlighting your performance quite a bit, in talking about The Odyssey. I just wonder how that lands for you as someone who has been doing this for so much of her life, to be getting that spotlight in the lead-up to release.

Emotional. I’ve had ups and downs in my career — you work for a bit and then you’re not working for a bit. You are criticized for your physicality. It’s a tricky game. Even meeting him was enough; everything else is very special, very personal. It validates the fact that I’m good at what I do and I care. I’m very grateful and I take it very seriously.