Actress Samantha Morton, a two-time Academy Award nominee and star of Christopher Nolan’s hit blockbuster The Odyssey, has claimed that Hollywood ageism cost her work despite her impressive accolades.
The 49-year-old Morton, who catapulted to mainstream success in 2002 with Steven Spielberg’s Minority Report and her Oscar nominated turn in Jim Sheridan’s In America, recently revealed on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that she has not worked in over a year since wrapping production on Nolan’s The Odyssey, blaming it on Hollywood ageism.
“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,” Morton said. “I do believe I’m a good actor, [but] there are other good actors out there. Do you know what I mean? So, the politics of the industry has changed massively.”
Morton played the goddess Circe in Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s epic poem. According to her, when Nolan cast her in the role, she admitted to feeling “hope and faith, that, I suppose, if you keep at it, and you keep producing good work, and that the right people see it, then maybe you can carry on working.”
As noted by Variety, Morton’s turn in The Odyssey has been hailed as one of the more impressive standouts in the film, with her even recently being ranked by the outlet as having “the movie’s best performance among the sprawling ensemble cast.”
“When I got the call [from Chris Nolan], I started to cry,” Morton previously told Variety. “Then we had a get to know you chat, and I read the script. But I didn’t know if it would go any further. So when he called and said, ‘Would you like to do it?’ I was blown away. He could have anybody on the planet, and he chose me… As you get older as an actress, roles like this are just few and far between.”