Samantha Morton Quotes

I'm so lucky to have the opportunity to work with some directors and some actors I wouldn't have dared to think I would work with one day.

After an 18-year career, I left the film industry, not wanting to become one of those child-actor cautionary tales.

Acting is a precarious business. I have had periods where I felt like I couldn't get arrested, but you have to see it as a long game.

Making a transition to the adult acting industry was pretty smooth for me, and I had a great balance and a great opportunity not to do just children shows.

I've been in the industry from the age of 9, so I have an agent. That's how you get auditions.

I booked my first series when I was 13. Acting kind of took control because I was just going from part to part at that point.

To be honest, it's considered very late to start acting at 11 and a half, for the industry. Most kids are doing it from toddlerhood on.

I worked with fantastic actors, fantastic directors. People I would never otherwise have met. Was I limited? Yes. Did I use it as I could have? No. But I was always ambivalent about Hollywood and what I wanted. And ambivalence in our business is no good for success.

At the time I was growing up in the business I was very well established within the industry as a child actor and as I grew up and turned into a teenager there was less and less work.

Not a lot of people make that transition from child actor to bigger, better roles.

I love working with children and this young boy, Thomas Sangster, is quite a remarkable young actor. He raises your game, you know. He certainly raised mine.

I was definitely acutely aware, the transition of being seen as a child actor to being taken seriously as an adult actor. It's not always a smooth one.

At times, I feel sorry for kids who have succumbed in some kind of way to being a child actor.

With acting, you do want to get every job, and you're trying to get every audition, but then you reach a certain stage where you start to kind of gravitate toward the stories and the people that have a similar heartbeat.

I think actors worry too much about age. They should just get out there and make sure they're up for whatever jobs come along.

I learnt a lot as a child actor. Since I had been before the camera, I knew how it would be to be on a set or on a shoot. That way it was easy for me when I re-entered the industry as the main lead.

Even though my parents experiences were different from mine. I wasn't a child actor brat; I didn't travel with them in the circuit. But I got a look into their world, so I did know what I was getting into, to an extent. And they are a constant source of grounding.

When I was a child actor, I had the fear that I was going to be cast as the tree.

The good thing about being an actress is that it's very children-friendly. I can work for three months and then I can have six months off. And then I can work for six months and have six months off.

As a young actor, there's a very small group of kids, just a handful. As you get older, all of a sudden, there's a bunch of guys your age that work. It's a very different experience when you used to be on the short list because you were young and there's only so many kids that can do the work and then all of a sudden you're in your twenties and thirties and there's a whole bunch of guys that can do your work.

I went on to host a kids' program from when I was around 10 until 15. In some ways I'm a child actor.

I just want to do a good job with each role that I take and continue to better myself as an actress because that's what I love about this job... being able to act and work with so many different people on such a wide range of projects.

What I've learned, more than anything, as a young actor who has been in the business for 10 years, is just to be around guys and girls, like Ron Perlman, Bill Lucking, Kim Coates, Tommy Flanagan, Katey Sagal, who have been in this business for a very long time, and to learn what to do and what not to do from them, every day, and to see how they navigate through their Hollywood life.

Writers will see your work and want to try you in different things but I think you have to stay true to your vehicle. We all have a vehicle. Whether it's a thug, or a school child or the babyface or the sex siren or the video vin, whatever it is ride that until the wheels fall off and eventually, if you build your foundation then you can branch off.

I've been acting since I was ten years old. I had two lines in Snow White and the Seven Dwarves at the community theater I was very focused and I loved it. My parents believed in the arts and being well rounded. So I played piano and violin, I danced and acted. They never thought I would go into acting though. They just wanted a well-rounded child and it was a bit of a shock to my dad when I said "I want to go to acting school" because he is a psychology professor and was thinking of something more academic.