Nolan told her he had Circe in mind from the start. Twenty years after her last Oscar nomination, the conversation is back.

Two Oscar nominations. Decades of steady, careful work. And then a ten-minute scene in one of the biggest films of the year.

Samantha Morton plays Circe in Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey. The sorceress appears briefly. She faces Matt Damon's Odysseus and delivers a monologue about his men's greed and loss of humanity, then she is gone. Critics have not been able to stop talking about it.

In a new cover story for ELLE, published November 10 as part of the magazine's Women in Hollywood portfolio, Morton spoke about how the role came together. "I read the script and I just felt an affinity with this woman," she said. Nolan told her he had written Circe with her in mind from the start.

The performance has drawn comparisons to Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight. Nolan made the connection himself, telling the Los Angeles Times that Morton's turn was the "fulcrum" of his retelling. For an actress who earned Oscar nominations for Sweet and Lowdown in 1999 and In America in 2004, the attention marks a return to the center of awards conversation after two decades.

"I've always been there," she told ELLE. "I work quietly and carefully and meticulously." The last time her name circulated this seriously in Oscar discourse, the year was 2004. The circle may be completing.