HER latest movie is up for three Oscars at tonight’s ceremony – but British star Samantha Morton’s rise to the top of Tinseltown has not been without its challenges.
After a chaotic childhood growing up in the care system in Nottingham, the actress struggled in a brutal industry and was often told she was overweight.
As she got older, Samantha was branded difficult as she fought back against demands for nudity on set and even told one film director to “f*** off” when he demanded she take off her bra in front of the whole crew.
Her latest movie, American psychological drama The Whale, has become the toast of Hollywood for Brendan Fraser’s portrayal of a morbidly obese man’s battle to reconnect with his teen daughter, played by Sadie Sink from season four of Stranger Things.
Brendan is up for Best Actor, while Hong Chau is nominated for Best Supporting Actress.
Samantha, 45, who plays his former wife, speaks glowingly about her co-stars and directors, saying: “It was a really special film to make.
It’s just generally a really great calibre of people to be giving your time to, so I feel really chuffed.”
In the early years she battled against the odds to break into the male-dominated world of movies.
But Samantha, a previous Oscar nominee, went on to appear in films in the Nineties and Noughties, from period dramas Emma and Jane Eyre to Woody Allen comedy drama Sweet And Lowdown, and Minority Report alongside Tom Cruise.
She was put into care as a baby and growing up, was moved between at least 12 foster families, three children’s homes and several more emergency shelters.
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‘Floods of tears’
Samantha suffered sexual abuse and was charged with attempted murder, aged 14, after threatening to kill an older girl with a knife.
Describing the incident, she said: “I snapped and said I was going to kill her.
"I didn’t harm her, I didn’t touch her, but I said those words. And I regret it and I am sorry.”
Samantha spent three days in solitary confinement, in an adult cell.
She said: “I was mortified. We were all abused. Nobody looked after us properly.
"We were rioting in that home because they were locking the fridges at night.”
At the age of 13, Samantha was selected to join charity The Television Workshop, for aspiring performers, and she found acting to be a release from her troubles.
She quickly learned on the job and at 16 moved to London for her breakthrough role as teen sex worker Tracy Richards in ITV drama Band Of Gold from 1995 to 1996.
But it was there that she faced her first challenges.
She told the Changes With Annie Macmanus podcast: “So I’d arrive on set for rehearsal and the director would be like, ‘OK, well you need all that off’ and I would be like, ‘What, all my clothes?’ and they’d be like, ‘Yeah, we need to see’.
“So I would go back to the caravan, which I was sharing with three other women, and be in floods of tears.”
Describing the industry as “brutal”, Samantha said: “When I was younger they were like, ‘You’re fat’.
“We’re looking at the 2000s and late Nineties, where you had to be a size zero. I’d been a gymnast as a kid and then a dancer, so I’ve always had muscle and been strong.
“And certainly when I look back at me in shows like Band Of Gold, or whatever, I was not fat.
“But they called me fat. So I was fat then. My forehead was too big, my teeth were too crooked.
“There was always a reason. And you get over that because you’re like, ‘Hopefully talent will prevail’.
And it does and I was working all right.”
It was during filming in Israel that Samantha told the director to “f*** off” after he ordered her to go topless on a whim.
She said: “I was doing a love scene and he said with a megaphone, ‘Take off your bra, I want to see your nipples’ in front of the entire crew.
“There was a lot of bullying going on and I just went up to him and said, ‘F*** off, this has got to stop.
"If you want these things, you discuss them with me prior to me arriving on set’. So, mostly, my ‘difficultness’ came from that.”
The actress also recalls how she later struggled in the industry as she hit an age where, as a woman, “you’re literally just forgotten, there’s no roles for you”.
Samantha, whose career has included leading roles in TV dramas Harlots and The Walking Dead, now lives in Monyash, Derbys, with her husband Harry Holm, a filmmaker, and their children Edie, 15, and 11-year-old Theodore.
She also has daughter Esme, 23, from a previous relationship with actor Charlie Creed-Miles, her co- star in 1999 movie comedy The Last Yellow.
Esme has followed in her mum’s footsteps as an actress and stars as the title character in Amazon Prime drama series Hanna.
As a youngster, Samantha made her name starring in edgy indie flicks, but she admits being a mother has changed her approach to work.
She said: “At certain times you’ve just got to pay the mortgage and you try to take the best of a bad bunch.
"When I was younger I was really picky. I didn’t care about money, as long as me and Esme were OK and I had an overdraft. It was all about the art.
“And then I had three kids and a mortgage and I was like, ‘I need to do the best work that’s available’.”
Post-apocalyptic
Samantha’s career got a boost between 2017 and 2019 with the lead role in ITV Encore’s Harlots, a show about rival brothel owners.
She said: “They’d offered the lead role to Helena Bonham Carter. She didn’t want to do it.
“We have the same agent so she was like, ‘Sam, this thing has come in, the part’s written for an older woman but I want you to take a look at it because I think you would be great’.
"So I read it. And I was like, ‘Yeah’.”
Samantha also played baddie Alpha Tales in post-apocalyptic American TV horror series The Walking Dead from 2019 to 2020.
She said: “The part is possibly the best I’ve ever had. I love that character so much.
“She’s a villain but a complex woman who is, again, a survivor of childhood abuse, and she had an abusive husband so killed him and looks after her child and is this single mum.
“I did really well on that role and it was like, ‘Oh, she’s still around? She’s still acting?’.”
Acting is clearly a job Samantha loves with a passion and, despite suffering a stroke in 2006, she battled to get back in front of the camera for her role in 2008 movie Synecdoche, New York.
It is about a theatre director’s work and love troubles as he creates a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse as part of his new play.
Recalling the stroke, which left her semi-paralysed for many weeks, Samantha said: “A piece of 17th-century plaster fell on my head.
"I went to the hospital and everything was OK. And then it wasn’t.
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“I spent a long time in rehab learning how to walk and getting better and then went straight off to make Synecdoche, New York.”
It is a good thing for Samantha and the movie industry that she got back on her feet and kept on going — because she is now up in lights again at the Oscars.
From Band Of Gold to Hollywood
SAMANTHA made her name in movies but she got her first break on British TV.
Age 16, her role in Band Of Gold as a teen sex worker won critical acclaim.
Next came period dramas with a star turn in the BBC’s The History of Tom Jones in 1997 and film roles in Emma (1996) and Jane Eyre (1997).
In 1999, Woody Allen flew her to the US to star in comedy-drama Sweet And Lowdown, which got her an Oscar nod.
Another Oscar shout came for Jim Sheridan’s In America in 2002, and she starred in Minority Report the same year with Tom Cruise, who hailed her acting as “lightning in a bottle”.
For playing Myra Hindley in HBO film Longford in 2006 Samantha won Emmy, Bafta and Golden Globe nods.
Recent TV work includes TV’s Harlots, The Walking Dead and now The Serpent Queen.
Latest film The Whale was a hit last year.
She directed her first film, The Unloved, in 2009.
It drew on her time in care and won a Bafta for Best Single Drama.
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