Samantha Morton says Christopher Nolan gave her hope she could keep working at 49

Samantha Morton says landing a domiciled successful "The Odyssey" gave her renewed assurance that she could support moving arsenic she gets older.

On Monday's section of the "Happy Sad Confused" podcast, Morton reflected connected the container agency occurrence of "The Odyssey," successful which she plays the enchantress Circe.

The Christopher Nolan-directed movie has grossed $912 cardinal worldwide since its July 17 opening, per Box Office Mojo.

"Hope and faith," Morton said erstwhile asked what the film's reception meant to her. "That I suppose if you support astatine it, and you support producing bully work, and the correct group spot it, past possibly you tin transportation connected working."

The two-time Oscar nominee said she's gone done periods erstwhile activity dried up.

"I haven't worked for a twelvemonth since making 'The Odyssey,'" Morton said.

Although she has "really bully agents and a manager," she said getting older has made her much alert of really uncertain an acting profession tin be.

"But astatine the extremity of the day, I'm 49, and whilst I do judge I'm a bully actor, location are different bully actors retired there," she said.

While she now feels much "confident" she'll proceed acting for years to come, she's grateful simply to person the chance to activity pinch Nolan, Morton said.

"I've worked pinch immoderate superb people, but you're ever astatine the mercy, arsenic an actor, of who your employer is and what they expect of you and what they judge successful you to do for them," she said.

She added that she "genuinely cried" erstwhile she sewage the telephone from her team, who told her that Nolan wanted to meet her.

In 1 of the film's cardinal sequences, Circe, Morton's character, transforms Odysseus' men into pigs by reshaping their flesh. She antecedently told Vanity Fair that the segment utilized nary CGI and was achieved wholly done in-camera effects.

On the podcast, she said her early activity arsenic a magician's adjunct gave her an added appreciation for the domiciled and the filmmaking down it.

"I deliberation that life and creation person a really bizarre measurement of intertwining, and what's for you won't walk you," Morton said.

In a July question and reply with Variety, she said she felt that awesome movie roles, for illustration the 1 successful "The Odyssey," were becoming harder to travel by.

"As you get older arsenic an actress, roles for illustration this are conscionable fewer and acold between," Morton said. "I still activity each the time, but predominantly successful independent films aliases connected television."

Morton isn't the only Hollywood character to speak candidly astir really property tin style profession opportunities.

In 2024, Kirsten Dunst said she stopped moving for a while because she was being typecast arsenic a "sad mom."

"There's decidedly little bully roles for women my age," Dunst said.

In 2025, "White Lotus" prima Carrie Coon said she often gets typecast arsenic older.

"The cognition of maine is that I americium verbal, intellectual. My sound is lower, and I don't person Botox, truthful I thin to play older than I am," she said.