She appears on screen in The Odyssey for barely ten minutes. Yet Samantha Morton has emerged as a surprise frontrunner to win next year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar after delivering what many are calling the ‘standout performance’ in the summer’s blockbuster.
The acclaimed British actress has left audiences and critics spellbound with her portrayal of enchantress Circe in Christopher Nolan’s £190m adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic. Despite her ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ performance in the three-hour film, Ms Morton, 49, has become one of its biggest talking points. Its opening weekend saw it take more than £198m worldwide and top the box office on both sides of the Atlantic.
And should she take the golden statuette at next year’s Oscars, she would be in good company. Dame Judi Dench won Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth I in 1998’s Shakespeare In Love – despite appearing for just five minutes and 52 seconds.
One member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences predicted Ms Morton is all but certain to secure an Oscar nomination. The source said: ‘Hollywood can’t stop raving about Samantha. The Odyssey is the film everyone is talking about and she steals every scene she’s in. It doesn’t matter that the role is small. She delivers an emotional impact that lingers long after she’s gone.
‘At this stage I’d be amazed if she isn’t nominated and she’s going to take some beating.’
The recognition would mark a breakout moment for Ms Morton. She has twice received an Oscar nomination – in 2000 for her role as a mute laundress in Woody Allen’s Sweet And Lowdown, and in 2004 for In America, about an Irish immigrant family in New York. But while she has long been regarded as one of Britain’s most respected actresses, former film boss Harvey Weinstein notoriously dismissed her as being ‘too plain’ to become a leading lady.
That could be set to change. Nolan is understood to have offered Ms Morton the part of Circe without asking her to audition. The unexpected phone call reportedly left the actress in tears. A source at Universal Pictures, the studio behind the film, said: ‘It’s not quite a ‘‘blink-and-you’ll-miss-it’’ scene but ten minutes out of a three-hour movie is nothing.
Samantha Morton has emerged as a surprise frontrunner to win next year’s Best Supporting Actress Oscar after delivering what many are calling the ‘standout performance’ in The Odyssey
The acclaimed British actress has left audiences and critics spellbound with her portrayal of enchantress Circe in Christopher Nolan ’s £190m adaptation of Homer’s Greek epic
‘It could easily have been lost in the wash. Chris wanted Samantha from the start. She’s a classically trained actress and, while she doesn’t have the box-office draw of someone like [co-star] Anne Hathaway, you can’t take your eyes off her. Audiences have been gasping and crying at her scene.’
Social media has been full of praise for Ms Morton’s performance, with fans hailing it ‘mesmerising’ and ‘unforgettable’.
Ms Morton, who started out as a magician’s assistant, called on some of that early sleight-of-hand training to pull off a scene in which Circe turns men into pigs.
The Academy source said: ‘You watch her emotionally transform from a woman who is scared when the men turn up into someone who wields her power in the most profound and scary way.’
Nolan said the cast and crew ‘broke into a great round of applause’ after Ms Morton finished filming, saying: ‘The last time that happened was with Heath Ledger on The Dark Knight.’ Ledger, who died of a drugs overdose, won a posthumous Oscar in 2009 for his performance as the Joker.
Describing taking on the role of Circe, she said: ‘I left school at 12 and started acting at that age. I’m not highly educated. I didn’t know the source material. I was just going by the script which blew my mind. I was sobbing, I was angry. I can’t really remember it in its entirety other than there was a day when I was with the pigs. I got into the zone and I was lost.’
Beatrice Straight holds the record for the shortest performance to win an Oscar in 1976’s Network, in which she appeared for five minutes and 40 seconds.
