Samantha Morton to be Awarded the BAFTA Fellowship

Morton to receive honor during next week’s BAFTAs, Courtney LaBarge Bell appointed Executive Director of BAFTA North America

Award-winning British actor, writer and director Samantha Morton will be awarded the BAFTA Fellowship, the arts charity’s highest accolade bestowed by BAFTA in recognition of an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film, games or television. 

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 February 18 at Southbank Centre’s Royal Festival Hall hosted by David Tennant. See full list of BAFTA nominations here.

“As a proud BAFTA member I am honoured, profoundly humbled and grateful to BAFTA for giving me this award,” said Morton.

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.”

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.

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. 

BAFTA Fellows previously honoured for their work in film include Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, Steven Spielberg, Sean Connery, Elizabeth Taylor, Stanley Kubrick, Anthony Hopkins, Laurence Olivier, Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Christopher Lee, Martin Scorsese, Alan Parker, Helen Mirren, Mike Leigh, Sidney Poitier, Mel Brooks, Sir Ridley Scott, Thelma Schoonmaker, Kathleen Kennedy and Ang Lee. Sandy Powell received the BAFTA Fellowship at the Film Awards in 2023, and most recently Meera Syal CBE was honoured with the BAFTA Fellowship at the BAFTA Television Awards with P&O Cruises in May 2023.

As previously announced, June Givanni, the pioneering film curator, writer and programmer of African and African diaspora cinema, and founder of The June Givanni PanAfrican Archive, will be presented with BAFTA’s Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema award.

BAFTA also announced today that Courtney LaBarge Bell has been appointed Executive Director of BAFTA North America.

LaBarge Bell takes up the role in March and will lead the BAFTA North America teams in Los Angeles and New York, overseeing all activity in its program of events and screenings for members, including the annual BAFTA Tea Parties and year-round talent initiatives such as Breakthrough USA and the Newcomers Program. She joins an executive leadership team led by BAFTA’s CEO, Jane Millichip, and will work closely with the BAFTA North America Board of Directors chaired by Joyce Pierpoline to grow the not-for-profit’s membership, fundraising, sponsorship revenue, reach and impact in the region.

LaBarge Bell’s appointment comes nearly three years after the expansion of BAFTA’s North America operations in 2021, which saw the unification of its Los Angeles and New York branches, founded in 1987 and 1996 respectively. Of BAFTA North America’s 2,240-strong membership of established screen industry professionals, nearly 1,600 vote in the arts charity’s annual Awards for film, games and television. BAFTA has a global membership of 12,500.