Samantha Morton says she has not been hired for a single job in the year since she finished filming Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, even as her performance in that film has generated some of the earliest awards season conversation of 2026.
Morton plays Greek sorceress Circe opposite Matt Damon's Odysseus in the film. During an appearance on Josh Horowitz's Happy Sad Confused podcast on Monday, she addressed the gap directly.
"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. 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 said.
She was responding to a question about what recent critical attention has meant to her. Her answer on that point was brief.
"Hope and faith," she said. "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."
Morton also described the emotional weight of learning Nolan wanted to meet with her for The Odyssey. She said she cried when she found out, in part because she had previously missed a chance to appear in his 2006 film The Prestige.
She acknowledged that the industry's difficulty is not only creative but financial. "I think that life and art have a really bizarre way of intertwining and what's for you won't pass you," she said. "But sometimes it's hard to know that in the time, because there have been times when things haven't worked out and I've been very sad both creatively and financially because I have three children and a mortgage and [a] life."
Despite those pressures, Morton said she feels confident she will keep working. She expressed that belief in persistence and professional conduct, telling the podcast's audience to "cherish" moments of recognition, describing them as "few and far between."
Morton has two Oscar nominations to her name, both for independent films: Best Supporting Actress for Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown and Best Actress for Jim Sheridan's In America. She is also known to television audiences for AMC's The Walking Dead and Starz's The Serpent Queen, and appeared in the 2002 film Minority Report and 2016's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
The Wrap reported that Morton is generating early awards buzz despite appearing on screen for only about 10 minutes in The Odyssey, a film with a large ensemble cast.
Her next project, according to her IMDb page, is Lisa Mulcahy's Love and War.
