Award-winning British actor, writer and director Samantha Morton will be awarded the BAFTA Fellowship at the EE BAFTA Film Awards next week. It is the arts charity’s highest accolade bestowed by BAFTA in recognition of an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film, games or television.
Samantha Morton’s credits span independent British cinema to Hollywood blockbusters, television and theatre. From her breakout film role Under the Skin (1997), to her directorial debut The Unloved (2009), to She Said (2022), Morton across three decades and counting, has championed the portrayal of complex and often underrepresented stories.
Having worked with Darren Aronofsky, Jim Sheridan, Charlie Kaufman, Lynne Ramsay, David Cronenberg, Harmony Korine, Steven Spielberg, Michael Winterbottom and David Yates, on films spanning Morvern Callar (2002) and Control (2007) to The Minority Report (2002) and The Whale (2022), she is beloved by British independent filmmakers and Hollywood titans alike.
The BAFTA Fellowship will be presented as part of a special commemoration of Morton’s work to-date during the 2024 EE BAFTA Film Awards ceremony on 18 February at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall.
Samantha Morton said: “As a proud BAFTA member I am honoured, profoundly humbled and grateful to BAFTA for giving me this award.”
Anna Higgs, Chair of BAFTA’s Film Committee, said: “Samantha Morton is a mesmerising storyteller with incredible range. She has made an extraordinary impact on the British film industry – consistently shining a light on complex characters and championing underrepresented stories. On-and-off screen, she always works to break down societal barriers and change the make-up of the screen industries for the better – often against great odds. Samantha is hugely respected by her peers in Britain and Hollywood alike for her versatility, talent and passion for the craft of acting, and we are delighted to be honouring her exceptional body of work at the EE BAFTA Film Awards next week.”
Born in Nottingham in 1977, at 12, Morton joined what was then the Central Junior Television Workshop. Within a couple of years, she was acting in theatre, with a stage début at the Royal Court and in hit television shows such as Cracker (1994); Band of Gold (1995–96), and The History of Tom Jones (1997), while her early TV-film roles included Emma (1996) and the lead role in Jane Eyre (1997).
Morton garnered international attention in 1997 for her searing performance in Carine Adler’s Under the Skin, earning her a BIFA nomination and the Boston Film Critics Award for Best Actress. She has been nominated for an Academy Award® first for Best Supporting Actress for Woody Allen’s Sweet and Lowdown (1999), and later for Best Actress for Jim Sheridan’s In America (2003).
Other notable film credits include work with such acclaimed directors as Lynne Ramsay on Morvern Callar (2002), for which she won Best Performance, Toronto Film Critics Award and a BIFA for Best Actress; Steven Spielberg on Minority Report (2002); Michael Winterbottom on Code 46 (2003); Shekhar Kapur on The Golden Age (2007); Harmony Korine on Mister Lonely (2007); Anton Corbijn on Control, (2007), earning her a Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Film Award nomination; Charlie Kaufman Synecdoche, New York (2008), David Cronenberg on Cosmopolis (2012), Andrew Stanton on John Carter (2012), Spike Jonze on Her (2013), David Yates on Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), Darren Aronofsky on The Whale (2022) and Maria Schrader on She Said (2022).
For her portrayal of notorious child-murderer Myra Hindley in Longford (2006) Morton received Best Actress nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award, and BAFTA Television Award, and won a Golden Globe®. In 2009, she made her directorial debut with television film The Unloved, a semi-autobiographical film based in the British children’s care system, which won the BAFTA Television Award for Best Single Drama, and a BAFTA Scotland Best Actor award for Robert Carlyle.
Morton has starred in hit shows such as Rillington Place (2016) and Harlots (2017-19) and the award-winning The Walking Dead, where she played the iconic villain, Alpha. In 2020 she was nominated for a Leading Actress BAFTA for the Dominic Savage drama I Am…Kirsty, which she co-wrote. Other major TV shows include period drama The Serpent Queen (2022) in the lead role of Catherine de Medici, and most recently The Burning Girls (2023). In 2023 she released her first music with producer Richard Russell.
