{"id":555306,"date":"2026-07-18T01:23:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T01:23:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/555306\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T01:23:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T01:23:12","slug":"how-samantha-morton-approached-her-scene-stealing-role-in-the-odyssey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/555306\/","title":{"rendered":"How Samantha Morton Approached Her Scene-Stealing Role in ‘The Odyssey’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before The Odyssey<\/a> hit theaters<\/a>, writer-director Christopher Nolan was singing the praises of one specific cast member: Samantha Morton, who has a small but very important role in his film. To the Los Angeles Times<\/a>, he said her character \u201ccomes in and changes the dynamic\u201d and admired how \u201cthere are no limitations on her performance.\u201d<\/p>\n

He even said his wife and producing partner, Emma Thomas, compared Morton\u2019s turn to Heath Ledger<\/a>\u2018s impactful presence in Nolan\u2019s The Dark Knight.<\/p>\n

With the film now open, audiences can now experience Morton\u2019s interpretation of Circe, a witch who famously transforms Odysseus\u2019 men into pigs. In a new interview with the Hollywood Reporter<\/a>, the star\u2014who genre fans may best know from Minority Report and The Walking Dead<\/a>\u2014talked about how she approached the role.<\/p>\n

She admitted she\u2019d never read the ancient Greek poem by Homer that the movie adapts (though she had seen the Simpsons parody of it). \u201cBut the script blew me away, and I was just so moved at how contemporary it felt,\u201d she told THR. \u201cWhen I got the role, I was just so excited to deliver for Chris and [producer] Emma [Thomas] to inhabit what my instinct was.\u201d<\/p>\n

She carried that initial impression of the script into her take on Circe. \u201cI felt that she was incredibly contemporary. I could identify with her. She felt like my sister, my mother, my gran, my aunt, my neighbor. She felt very real and very condensed,\u201d Morton said.<\/p>\n

She continued. \u201cI talk about the essential will of Circe. It\u2019s absolutely extraordinary what Chris has done with all of the women in the film. She just feels so whole, so fully realized, yet you\u2019re not there with her for an incredibly long amount of time. In that short timeframe, there\u2019s a lot to achieve, I think. But it doesn\u2019t feel rushed. It doesn\u2019t feel forced. It feels that she\u2019s every woman. She\u2019s all of us. I just really connected with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Odyssey is in theaters now.<\/p>\n

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel<\/a>, Star Wars<\/a>, and Star Trek<\/a> releases, what\u2019s next for the DC Universe on film and TV<\/a>, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Before The Odyssey hit theaters, writer-director Christopher Nolan was singing the praises of one specific cast member: Samantha…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[321,50678,93,61,60,35998,83194],"class_list":["post-555306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-christopher-nolan","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-samantha-morton","tag-the-odyssey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}