Samantha Morton is set to be honoured with a BAFTA Fellowship award for her ‘extraordinary’ 30 year acting career
Samantha Morton has been honored with a BAFTA Fellowship award for her ‘extraordinary’ 30-year acting career.
The actress, 46, will receive the gong at the EE BAFTA Film Awards on February 18 at the Royal Festival Hall in Southbank Centre.
The award is the highest honor given in recognition of outstanding achievement in television and film.
Samantha said: ‘As a proud BAFTA member, I am honoured, deeply humbled and grateful that BAFTA has presented me with this award.’
Anna Higgs, chair of BAFTA’s film committee, added: ‘Samantha Morton is a spellbinding storyteller with incredible range.
Samantha Morton, 46, is honored with BAFTA Fellowship award for her ‘extraordinary’ 30-year acting career
The actress will receive the gong at the EE BAFTA Film Awards on February 18 at the Royal Festival Hall at Southbank Center
‘She has had an extraordinary impact on the British film industry, consistently shining a light on complex characters and championing underrepresented stories. On and off screen, she is always working to break down societal barriers and change the makeup of the screen industry for the better – often against great odds.
“Samantha is hugely respected by her peers in Britain and Hollywood for her versatility, talent and passion for the craft of acting, and we are delighted to celebrate her exceptional body of work at the EE BAFTA Film Awards next week.”
Previous winners of the BAFTA Fellowship include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Elizabeth Taylor.
Samantha came to international attention in 1997 with her performance in Under The Skin and has since been nominated for Academy Awards and multiple Emmy and BAFTA nominations.
She previously received a Golden Globe and a BAFTA award for Best Single Drama.
The actress has starred in the award-winning The Walking Dead and the drama I Am… Kirsty, with the most recent show being The Burning Girls.
Speaking about receiving the upcoming award, Samantha spoke to Loose Women panellists Katie Piper, Branda Edwards, Christine Lampard, Joanna Lumley and Kelly Holmes about the honor on Wednesday.
She said: ‘It’s imposter syndrome, because I grew up in care, sometimes when I’m sitting on the toilet in a fancy hotel I think ‘omg’.’ Christine announced the incredible news of her upcoming award shortly after.
Samantha will receive the award next week – it is the highest award given in recognition of outstanding achievements in television and film
Samantha said: ‘As a proud BAFTA member, I am honoured, deeply humbled and grateful that BAFTA has presented me with this award.’
Speaking about receiving the upcoming award, Samantha spoke to Loose Women panellists Katie Piper, Branda Edwards, Christine Lampard, Joanna Lumley and Kelly Holmes about the honor on Wednesday.
She said: ‘It’s imposter syndrome, because I grew up in care, sometimes when I’m sitting on the toilet in a fancy hotel I think ‘omg’.’ Christine announced the incredible news of her upcoming award shortly after
Samantha also explained what life was like before success, adding: ‘I was in care from birth and then in care, if you like, put in a homeless hostel at 16 and they just leave you behind, that’s what happens. I had a lot of foster families, a lot of children’s homes.
“I got in trouble with the police, left school at 12 and didn’t have a degree, so it’s great that I’m here today, but back then there weren’t the resources for someone like me to make something of themselves.
‘That really wasn’t there and unfortunately it isn’t there today either. It’s even worse today than it was then. I work with the NSPCC because they cover such a wide range of how they can help people.”
It comes after she claimed Harvey Weinstein tried to destroy her career when she was in her early 20s.
The actress accused the disgraced producer – who is currently in prison after being found guilty of sex crimes – of threatening to make her ‘stop working’ after she turned down a bid to star in his romantic comedy About Adam from 2000, starring Kate Hudson, Stuart Townsend and Frances O’Connor.
She remembered further The Louis Theroux Podcast: ‘I said, “I don’t like it. I think the movie is really misogynistic and I don’t want to be part of it.”
The Minority Report actress said the casting director told her, “You don’t say no to Harvey.”
But Samantha insisted she wasn’t rejecting the producer, just the film – and was given a chilling warning when she refused to change her position.
She said: ‘I (then) got a phone call saying, “You can’t say no.” The ‘no’ was not listened to. So they kept coming back with this role and I was told unequivocally, ‘You’re not going to work again unless you do this role. I’m going to make your life hell. You won’t work anymore’ – Weinstein pictured in October 2022
She said: “I had just worked with Stuart Townsend on Under The Skin. It just wasn’t interesting to me. I was very polite.
“I (then) got a phone call saying, ‘You can’t say no.’ The ‘no’ was not listened to. So they kept coming back with this roll and I was told unequivocally:
‘You won’t work again unless you fulfill this role. I’m going to make your life hell. You won’t work anymore.’
The Whale actress refused to budge, admitting that she felt her decision cost her roles in a number of Weinstein’s later films, including being cleared in favor of Lena Headey for a role in 2005’s The Brothers Grimm opposite Matt Damon and Heath Ledger after the producer labeled her ‘unf****able’.
Samantha said, “I was wondering why he was anti-me?” Then she remembered the warning about Adam.
She added, “I forgot because it was years before. And all these years later, I realized that (if) I got an offer, got a letter from an executive, if Miramax or the Weinstein Company had anything to do with it, it was just terrible for me.
“He had a reason, a deep-seated reason, to just try to destroy my career… He absolutely couldn’t, because I kept working and making independent films all over the world.”
Samantha goes on to talk about her love for America, admitting that she also preferred working in the US and that the sets always felt ‘more comfortable’.
Weinstein was once a powerful media mogul before dozens of women came forward to accuse him of rape and sexual assault in 2017
She notes that as a young woman on film sets in Britain, she was often asked to do things that “wouldn’t happen now” and gained a reputation for being “difficult.”
She says, “I didn’t have the skills to verbalize when I felt uncomfortable or when something didn’t feel right.” She said she “never had these problems in America.”
Meanwhile, disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein was handed a 16-year prison sentence in February 2023.
The once-powerful media mogul, 70, was found guilty of rape and two other counts of sexual assault during a trial in Los Angeles in December after being convicted of sex crimes in New York City earlier in 2020.