Taken into care, abused, objectified: the actor had a traumatic start to life – and her career. Why does she feel such a strong connection to her new TV role: privileged, notorious Catherine de Medici?
Not so long ago, Samantha Morton was given a relic from her past – her application form to join Nottingham’s Central Junior Television Workshop (one of the organisation’s leaders, clearly proud of Morton’s success, had hung on to it). It had asked her to list what she wanted to be when she grew up. Prime minister, she wrote, followed by novelist and actor. She laughs, remembering it. We had been talking about whether she might go into politics one day – not such a leap for an actor who is intensely political (the “novelist” bit might have to wait). But it also seems to sum up so much else about the young Sam I’m picturing, defiant blue eyes staring out from the scrappy passport photo that would have been stapled to the corner of the sheet. Drive and ambition, and a feeling that despite everything she had been through by that point – in and out of care for years, subjected to physical and sexual abuse – that her hopes and dreams could be as big as anyone’s.
Through immense talent, luck and sheer force of will, Morton, 45, did make it – Hollywood success, indie superstardom, two Oscar nominations, a Bafta for the first film she directed, and now starring roles in big TV shows. She was in The Walking Dead, playing Alpha, the leader of a zombie army, and has just been announced as the lead in another series, The Burning Girls. Her latest is in The Serpent Queen, as Catherine de Medici, the 16th-century queen of France, vilified throughout history, but portrayed here by Morton with characteristic empathy (and based on the biography by Leonie Frieda).
