Tom Morton is a British, French, and Canadian actor appearing alongside Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in Coralie Fargeat’s highly anticipated film, The Substance. He also starred alongside Rossy de Palma in Christian Faure’s The World at Her Feet as Olivier, the assistant to the Machiavellian agent Caroline Fox. In addition to his on-screen work, Tom is an accomplished voice artist across various genres. He hosted the popular Spotify Original Podcast Real Pirates and has lent his voice to international campaigns for brands like Guerlain, Issey Miyake, and Azzaro. Most recently, he voiced the security announcements for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Tom’s talents include directing, producing, and writing. He has worked on projects such as adaptations of Eugene Ionesco’s Exit the King, Kafka’s The Trial, and Bacri-Jaoui’s Cuisine et Dépendances.
Thank you for agreeing to catch up with Occhi Magazine. Born to a British father and a French mother, you were raised in London and attended the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle. Tell us more about your schooling.
I feel very fortunate to have attended the Lycée in London because whilst I don’t suppose any of us realised it at the time, it really was quite a unique environment to grow up in. For one thing, we were receiving an incredibly comprehensive education that gave us a solid grounding in history, languages, literature and a range of other subjects that would put us in good stead for any higher education path we might choose, in French… in London. And that meant that pretty much all of us there were fluent in two languages, but sometimes as many as four or five! So it was completely commonplace for children in the playground to switch continuously between French, English, Arabic, Persian, Spanish and plenty of other languages, language and difference weren’t things to think about, they were just part of the landscape.
The Lycée was an incredible melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, coming together at the heart of one of the most diverse cities on the planet; that wealth of different experiences, the richness of that mix, gave me an insatiable curiosity and fascination for people and stories from all over the world, and I think it’s that very curiosity that continues to play a huge part in what I do today.
When did you decide to pursue a career in the arts.
I was actually still at school when I made that decision. I was incredibly lucky to have grown up in a city, London, where I had access to world class theatre, and thankfully, my parents were avid theatre goers – I’m not suggesting I was at the theatre every week, but I certainly developed a sense of the magic of live theatre from an early age. I vividly remember some productions I saw at the National Theatre or the Barbican even now, thirty years later! I also spent a lot of time watching movies at home on a loop, wearing out Betamax and VHS tapes of Charlie Chaplin and the Marx brothers. But that was my formative time as an audience member, the things that made me a fan – which I continue to be today – it remained compartmentalised, and abstract.
I didn’t realise you could be one of those people I saw on tv or on stage, not until I actually saw a friend’s dad in a play in the west end; it was as if the fourth wall had come down in front of my very eyes, I suddenly saw that there wasn’t in fact an “us and them”, and that someone like me could do this for a job! And that was pretty much that – I started to take part in school plays, and before I’d turned 18, my decision was made.
In 2004, you moved to Paris and trained at the Cours Florent under Lesley Chatterley. Please tell us more about your experience and how it shaped your approach to acting.
I would say that the single most profound experience I associate with my time studying with Lesley was being given a toolbox for the first time. Up until that point, throughout my time at university in Edinburgh and performing in plays at the Bedlam Theatre, the work that I did was a mixture of instinct, observation and mimicry. And I’d say that those were useful skills to have honed over that time, and I continue to rely on them to some extent even now. But what I realised was that without technique, without sharpening, these skills could only ever get you so far, and soon you would find the limits of your range and abilities. Working with Lesley, diving into the Meisner method, allowed me to move from instinctual to methodical, pushing myself well beyond my comfort zone and giving me the tools to dive reliably into emotions and truth in the performances I gave.
The other thing that stands out for me from that time is that it is when I first understood the value in identifying what makes you unique and leaning into that – there is a tendency to attempt to model ourselves after people we admire, to emulate how they behave or at least how we perceive it, but I think the secret is to be yourself because no one else can do that! And that becomes the start of a long journey of self-discovery, not to mention self-acceptance.
Your first feature film role came in 2008, when Isabelle Mergault cast you in The Merry Widow alongside Michèle Laroque and Jacques Gamblin. Please share your experience.
I had just left drama school when I got cast in that film, I think it came about 6 months after I graduated – when I look back at that, I am struck by how young I was! Working on that film was exciting because it felt like the culmination of all I had been working towards since the age of 16, and it was incredibly surreal to suddenly go from teaching English to make ends meet to being on set with performers I had grown up with, and whose filmography I knew backwards in some cases! But that comes with its own challenges, it’s very nerve-wracking to be working with these people and the pressure I put on myself not to disappoint them was very tangible to me. And that probably wasn’t helped by the fact that I was very much thrown in at the deep end on a technical level – theatre and film might ostensibly be the same job, but there is a lot of technique at play when you’re making a film, and a lot of other things going on around you that can be quite unnerving if you’re not used to them. And drama schools, at the time, weren’t offering a lot of classes about acting for the camera, which I think I would have greatly benefited from!
You’re an accomplished voice artist and dialect coach. Do you apply particular research methods for such roles?
When I’m working on a specific dialect, particularly one that I don’t already have a lot of experience with or that just isn’t in my repertoire yet, then yes, a great deal of research goes into the preparation. I believe that dialect is character, to me it paints a picture of a character’s identity as much as costume, hair and makeup – it is as much part of the first impression a character gives as anything else. And dialect paints a picture of the character’s identity, their journey to get to the story they’re in now.
So I familiarise myself with the world that accent inhabits, learn about its history, its roots and its evolution over time – thankfully there are a lot of phenomenal resources online, entire archives of recordings compiled by linguists and anthropologists. I daresay a lot of people would find the process tedious by I find it fascinating and love getting lost down the rabbit hole!
Voice is different, not least because we usually don’t have the kind of lead time film and theatre have – it’s typically a case of show up, here’s the script, there’s the microphone, go. So it becomes more of an exercise in spontaneity, and my love of improvisation is what serves me best here – along with being adaptable to the input I receive from the director of the project during the recording.
What attracts you to a role?
I find people endlessly fascinating – I’m constantly watching people around me, on transport, in stores, imagining their stories to entertain myself. I’d be surprised if I got them right very often, but that’s not the point of it! Every character is the hero of their own story, however small a part they might play in the film they appear in – what draws me to a role is figuring that character out, mapping their world and their inner logic to create the most rounded portrayal of them.
Of your many achievements is there one you’re most proud of?
Surviving! (Laughs) kidding aside, I am very proud to be able to say that despite the challenges and the ups and downs, I am still here, telling stories and making a living from doing so – that doesn’t always feel like it’s going to be the case in this business, so to be able to acknowledge that is important. Beyond that, I’m very proud to be doing work that seems to resonate with audiences, and I feel very lucky when i hear from strangers that something I have done has inspired them, or or holds meaning for them in some way.
You appear alongside Demi Moore and Margaret Qualley in Coralie Fargeat’s ‘The Substance’ Please tell us more about the production, your role, and what audiences can expect.
I think it’s safe to say that nothing can quite prepare audiences for Coralie’s vision! The Substance is a weird and fascinating movie, and it has been utterly thrilling to watch it meet the audience and see them lose their minds over it. It seems to be resonating with people in a way that is truly captivating. I knew as soon as I read the script that this film was going to blow everything else out of the water, but to see it come together the way it has. It is as if David Cronenberg and John Waters got together to tell the story of Dorian Gray from a feminist perspective, blood, guts and fury. My character is a doctor Demi Moore’s Elizabeth Sparkle meets early on in her journey, and that encounter is sort of a tipping point for her, it’s the last moment of sanity before the wheels come off altogether and she embarks down a road she won’t escape unscathed. But he is also the straw that breaks the camel’s back and might well be the thing that cements her fate in that moment.
What projects are you currently working on?
I’ve always got a number of irons in the fire – you have to! I’m currently writing a play which I’m hoping to finish this year, and I’m also working on a couple of film projects in Paris and the US. And of course, I never really know what new and unexpected project is around the corner – The Substance came out of the blue and it’s been amazing!
Where can our readers find out more about you?
www.tommorton.com / itstommorton on Instagram and Twitter (or X).
Photos Credit: Tom Morton Photography
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