An actress has revealed she was ‘massively uncomfortable’ filming scenes playing a sex worker when she was just 16 years old.
Samantha Morton was a teenager when she played sex worker Tracy in the first two seasons of TV series Band of Gold, which started in 1995.
The crime drama was written by Kay Mellor and followed the lives of a group of sex workers who live and work in Bradford’s red-light district.
It also starred Geraldine James, Cathy Tyson and Barbara Dickson.
Samantha’s character was a 15-year-old runaway at the start of the first season, who was desperately trying to make ends meet.
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She briefly moved to London to start college but was eventually forced to return to Bradford and then spiralled into drug addiction and mental health problems, later killing two of her former clients and ex-pimp.
The character’s story ended in tragedy, with the teenager killing her father and then taking her own life.
After that break-out role Samantha went on to appear in Emma, Jane Eyre, Sweet and Lowdown, In America, Minority Report, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Walking Dead and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and The Whale.
Reflecting on her first major screen credit, the 46-year-old has now spoken about how she felt filming sex scenes as a teenager.
Asked about what it was like going from Nottingham to Hollywood, the actress said while she ‘got on with it’, it ‘wasn’t easy’.
‘I’d been working since I was 12 and did Band of Gold at 16, where there were sex scenes I was massively uncomfortable about,’ she told The Times.
‘Directors would ask me to get my breasts out and I didn’t want to so I was considered difficult.
‘Once the amazing costume lady gave me corn plasters to put on my boobs because — this was before digital film that could be edited — if they filmed me they wouldn’t be able to use the shots.’
She added: ‘When I was 23, I was on a movie and the director said through his megaphone, “Take off your bra, I want to see your nipples”, in front of the whole crew. I burst into tears. I didn’t see how it would make the film better. We’ve come a long way, that wouldn’t happen today.’
Growing up in Nottingham, Samantha’s mother was in an abusive relationship and her father was an alcoholic.
When she was 13, she reported being sexually abused in a children’s home, but nothing was done and a year later she was given a criminal record for threatening another girl, however acting gave her a way out and she moved to London at 16 to pursue more work in the industry.
In 2020 Samantha spoke about feeling ‘very vulnerable’ on set and would end up ‘sobbing in my trailer’ because of the explicit scenes she would have to do on Band of Gold.
When she once refused to do something revealing, Samantha felt she was tarnished as being tough to work with as result.
‘These were the days when people were smoking on set and just a different world and I was very vulnerable and I got a reputation quite quickly for being a bit tricky because I came from Nottingham, I came from a bit of a rough background, and the only way I felt that I could hold my own was by being a bit tough back try and find some toughness that I didn’t have,’ she explained.
Band of Gold is streaming on ITVX.
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