photo by Jean-Baptiste Mondino

“The more you do, the more your name stands up and what’s for you won’t pass you. Besides, Hollywood frightens me. Selling yourself in order to work. Giving a pound of your flesh. Good stories need good actors to make them believable. The more you see someone on magazine covers or selling shampoo, the less you can relate to them as that character.”-Samantha Morton (via IMDB.com)

photo by Mary McCartney

“You must acquire the trick of ignoring those who do not like you, in my experience those who do not like you fall into 2 categories, the stupid & the envious. The stupid will like you in 5 years time, the envious never-The Libertine

This post is for LAMB Acting School 101: Samantha Morton. For this project I decided to highlight 3 films starring this talented actress.

The Libertine

“You could buy my slit for a pound a night, sir. I would not mind that. But I think you would not have it, sir. What I think you want is power over me, which I do bridle at.”-Elizabeth Barry

If you read about my Johnny Depp Tweetathon last year then you are aware of my love for this film. I feel that it’s very underrated. The Libertine is about John Wilmot (Depp) who was a slutty, drunk poet. He often writes plays for the theater which is where he comes across actress Elizabeth Barry (Morton), who he mentors. Though they work together to hone her acting skills she doesn’t give in when he tries to screw her. So he ends up teaching her about the theater while she teaches him about wanting something you can’t have.

Minority Report

This was the first film that I saw Morton in. I found her performance super creepy and couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen her in anything before. The movie is set in a future version of society in which people’s thoughts are read making it easy for them to be arrested prior to actually committing a crime. This foreknowledge is provided by precogs which are psychics who can see the future. Morton plays the precog Agatha. Tom Cruise stars as a cop who is arrested and then must find out why.

Expired

“I’m one of the most hated people in the world. Nobody likes me. People run from me like the plague. Give me the finger. Insult me. Verbally abuse me.”-Claire

I can’t believe that I’m mentioning this movie (as I usually highlight things that are more on the fun side) but Morton was great in it so I had to. Expired is an incredibly depressing romantic drama about the relationship of two socially awkward people. Morton stars as Claire Barney and Jason Patric is opposite her as Jay Caswell. They are both meter readers. When I watched the film I tried to give the Jay character the benefit of the doubt but he was super hateful. It’s a difficult movie to watch but both actors are very believable.

You can also watch Expired on Netflix.

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