Who Plays Circe In ‘The Odyssey’?

With a story as literally epic as Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, it’s not easy to pick a favorite part or performance in the film. But the practical magic (no, really) of the pig scene and the woman who made that happen are absolute standouts. Here’s what you need to know about Samantha Morton, who plays Circe in The Odyssey.Odysseus’s men encounter Circe, a witch who appears to live alone on an island, after abandoning him on the beach. She senses their barbaric nature and promptly turns them into pigs. Embarrassing for them! This is her modus operandi, we learn. There are other animals on the island who she’s also made from people, including a cheeked-up man she turned into a deer and her own sister she keeps as a pet bird. Odysseus figures her out and they reach some kind of mutual respect. From the terrifying way Morton does Circe’s sculpting magic to the way she levels with Matt Damon’s Odysseus, her performance in The Odyssey is a standout.Samantha Morton is a two-time Oscar nominee, NBDMorton was nominated for an Academy Award in the year 2000 for her supporting performance in Sweet and Lowdown and in 2002 for her leading performance in In America. You might know her best as the precog Agatha in Minority Report and more recently-ish as Mary Lou Barebone in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and Sadie Sink’s mom in The Whale. She’s also the voice of Ruby in Max & Ruby and has a music career under the name Sam Morton.On the small screen, she played Catherine de’ Medici in The Serpent Queen, as well as two other shows that may appeal to fans of The Odyssey for different reasons.She played a big bad cult leader on The Walking DeadIf your favorite thing about Morton’s performance was how much it scared you, then you’ve gotta see her play Alpha on The Walking Dead. The series, which begins in the middle of a zombie (or “walker”) apocalypse, highlights the many ways in which such a drastic change can affect human society. The surviving heroes encounter a lot of cults that have popped up in the absence of the United States government. Some are cannibals. Some have tyrannical and/or polygamous leaders. At least one makes up a language and lives in a trash heap.Add Cosmopolitan as a preferred source in your Google search results.Use your Google account to add this to your settings.Alpha’s cult, the Whisperers, is somehow weirder and more terrifying than all of them combined. They wear masks made out of walker skin, give up their names, and live among the undead. Alpha has a very bleak outlook on life and carried out one of the worst attacks on TWD’s protagonists like... ever. Fun fact: the man who played the Whisperer called Beta, Ryan Hurst, is also in The Odyssey as Mentor.She played a fierce feminist madam on HarlotsAnd if your favorite thing about Circe was her female rage, you simply must binge Harlots on Hulu ASAP. The series is about rival brothels in 1760s London that are run by women. Morton plays the protagonist Margaret Wells, a former sex worker who now looks after her own girls and is determined to run an establishment that puts their safety and financial security first. She also has two daughters who she’s trying to advance in society by getting them a position as a nobleman’s mistress.Harlots ran for three seasons, but still feels somewhat underrated. It’s a brightly colored, radical, often quite sexy, funny, and dramatic alternative (or companion) to something like Bridgerton. It also stars Lesley Manville as Lydia Quigley, Margaret’s rival who traps girls into indentured servitude, Jessica Brown Findlay and Eloise Smyth as the daughters, Kate Fleetwood as an 18th-century dominatrix, and Pippa Bennett-Warner as a former slave who Margaret hires as a housekeeper. If you stick with the series, you’ll also see characters played by Hugh Skinner, Liv Tyler, Rosalind Eleazar, Sheila Atim, Hannah Dodd, and Alfie Allen.They’re scrappy underdogs that you can’t help but root for when it feels like the patriarchal world is against them. (But also depends on them, you know?)