Samantha Morton Says Making The Odyssey Was a “Religious” Experience

Samantha Morton spent one summer decades ago working as a magician’s assistant. She never could have imagined that experience might come in handy someday while working on a Christopher Nolan epic.

At the time, the English actor was trying to get her Equity card—membership into the UK actors’ guild. “Back in the day, you couldn’t just start acting. You needed to work,” she tells Vanity Fair. “I loved it.”

Morton’s acting career eventually took off, with stints on British TV before she nabbed roles in Jane Eyre and Under the Skin, and an Oscar nomination for Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown in 2000. Morton, who earned her second Oscar nomination in 2003, has become known for her intense, shape-shifting performances in films like Minority Report; Morvern Callar; Synecdoche, New York; and The Whale.

That intensity serves her well in Nolan’s The Odyssey, which opened in theaters this weekend. Morton steals every scene she’s in as Circe, a sorceress who tricks Odysseus’s men into letting down their guard and having a meal in her isolated home on the island of Aeaea. As they eat, she puts a spell on her unwelcomed guests that transforms them into pigs.

In Homer’s original text, Circe uses a wand. But Morton’s Circe transforms these men with her hands, as a magician would: molding their flesh into snouts and ears in a visceral sequence that’s one of the film’s best. Morton is controlled and unsettling as the witch, but she also delivers a monologue to Matt Damon’s Odysseus that makes us sympathetic to her plight: She’s had to face a lot of predators (men!) on this isolated island. It’s the type of short-but-mighty performance from an acting veteran that gets brought up in the Oscar conversation.

As she was getting ready for the New York premiere of The Odyssey (“I’m so excited about my dress and I get to wear amazing jewelry—I’m a bit of a kid like that,” she says), Morton took a break to chat about the movie magic (and real magic?) that went into this CGI-free scene, why shooting in Scotland was so paramount to her performance, and what she thinks about the plight of young actresses, like her costar Zendaya, who are navigating Hollywood today.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

"She's a wise woman," says Morton of The Odyssey's Circe.

Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

Vanity Fair: How did you end up in this role?

Samantha Morton: I got a phone call saying, "So, Christopher Nolan would like to meet you. " And I cried a little bit because it was, “Really? Me?” I didn't know anything about the project. I was just blown away to meet him and [producer] Emma [Thomas] and to be in their space. And then I read the script and fell in love with the part, and then hoped that my interpretation would be enough that he would want me to do the part.

Circe is such an iconic character. What was the approach that you pitched to him?

First of all, I didn't know that I was going to be reading The Odyssey. I hadn't read the book at school. I didn't study the classics. So for me, it was just a character in a script, and my interpretation of this character was what it was. Once I was given the role, I did a bit of a deep dive into Circe and found it quite extraordinary. I very, very quickly pulled away because I didn't want to be burdened by that responsibility. It's there, but forget about it because I'm there to make this movie.

If you're approaching her as a character, how did you relate to her?

I don't overanalyze. I don't put my characters in psych therapy ever. But the one thing I did take away from it, and what I discovered as I was playing her, was that she felt so familiar. She felt so contemporary. She felt like my mom. She felt like my sister. She felt like my daughter. She felt like my friends. She felt like she could be anybody's mother, sister, daughter, grandma, lover, great aunt. She just felt very, very of every woman and all women, and that she carried the pain of all women throughout history.

Can you tell me a little bit about the location where you shot your scenes? I assume they created Circe’s home from scratch.

I arrived on set, I was like, "Where did you find this place? This is incredible." And they were like, "No, this is a set." I was floored. I've been on a lot of movie sets, and that says a lot if I thought it was a real building. And I did have my glasses on, so I wasn't being stupid. Scotland for me is a very special place, because my foster parents live in Scotland. I think that the environment I was in helped feed that as well, that I felt so at home. I felt that the ground beneath my feet was so familiar, and that my ancestors had been there.

That's interesting, because this character has such ownership over her space.

I was thinking about women in history that have been vilified—midwives or herbalists or mothers or wise women. And so to me, that connection to the earth and her respect for nature, it all tied in so beautifully with the fact that I knew my surroundings so well.

How does this scene work? Because when she's shaping them into pigs…

I just have to say there's no CGI, and everything is real and in camera.

How is that possible?

That's movie magic. There's always been ways that movie magic can deceive us in a beautiful way. I love magic; I was a magician's assistant when I was younger. I love David Blaine. When we're kids and we dream about being in the movies, for me, it was all about watching films like The Labyrinth or The Never Ending Story and wanting to be the white dragon floating in the sky.

So are you going to tell me the magic trick? Because you see her hands shaping them, and it's so visceral.

I love going to puppet theaters. When you think about mime or the history of theater in that way, it's the connection between the performer and the marionette, if it's puppetry. Or we think about Warhorse at the theater. It's not very long before you forget you're dealing with a puppet. Within a moment, you believe that something that isn't real is real, because our imagination as human beings can stretch far and wide. For me as a performer, I love that aspect of working with the practicals in the same way as, I don't know—if somebody's playing an airline pilot and they're in a plane, you have to make that believable. I had to make it believable that I was Circe.

And what are you humming?

It's just Circe. It's just her. I was just being her. I was in the zone and I don't know, it's just happening.

Christopher Nolan said in an interview that there was one take you did where everyone applauded you—and he hadn't seen that since Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. Do you remember what take that was?

I didn't recall it, but then when I started to try and go back in time, I remember a day when it was an alignment of everything. This is movie magic as well: when the weather's right, when the camera works, when the sound was good, when the special effects are working well, and when the acting works. And I think I was in the zone and ready to just go again and again and again. And when you're in the zone, you're in the zone. You're almost not present as Sam. I'm not a method actor at all, but when I'm doing it, I'm gone, and I just go to a different place. So there was an appreciation of something that happened, and I felt really, really, really moved—because the crew, they've been on that odyssey too. They've been all over the world with Chris, in the elements. Chris is the first on set every day. He's the last to leave. We're all so supportive of each other, and that's so beautiful.

Morton, a mother of three, says her family was "blown away" when they saw the film at the London premiere.

Jana Schuessler

You're so experienced as an actor. Did being on this set teach you anything new?

Yes. I have been acting since I was 12 and I've worked with some greats. And the difference here was that Chris is a master, but he doesn't profess to be a master. It's almost zen the way that Chris conducts himself, as a gentleman and as a professional. God, there's so much I've learned—but one thing in particular is this humility and this decency. Yes, it's epic. Yes, it's The Odyssey. But there's something so rare and extraordinary about this master, almost like when I think about Buddhism. It's very religious. The experience was very religious for me, being in that environment created by Sir Christopher Nolan and Dame Emma Thomas.

What has it been like to be on this world tour with the film?

I don't get to do this kind of stuff very often. I do really interesting work, but it's been a long time since I've been on a studio movie like this. The kindness and the compassion and the excitement that everybody feels, and the love for this film by the people that are part of it, is really rare. It's so different. And also how lovely Zendaya has been, because I've done most of my press with her. How extraordinarily grounded she is.

Do you think coming up in this industry now, like Zendaya is, would be easier or harder than it was when you started out?

Harder now. Much harder. When I was at the Oscars in 2000 or whenever it was, I certainly didn't have an email address. There was no social media. The world has changed enormously, but the pressure on actors, women in particular, to tick all those boxes must be extraordinary. When I was young, you'd just be a good actor and that was enough. I think that it's hard to be a kid anywhere. It's hard to be a young woman. The world is very different, and you have to navigate it differently and learn how to take care of yourself. But there were different pressures back then that we had as women,

I was reading an interview you did with Vanity Fair a few years back, where you spoke about the way you had to stand up for yourself against directors. You had that kind of conviction so young.

Well, I didn't have anything to lose. I came from nothing. I was a homeless kid. I was fostered from when I was born. I had 12 foster families and many children's homes. I had nothing to lose. And I'm 49 and I'm still working. And thank goodness I've managed to carry on, but it's not all just about my own terms because terms are always changing. The world is changing, the roles are changing, the requirements are changing. So just making sure I try to treat people as I want to be treated, but equally protect myself.