'The Rings of Power' star Morfydd Clark on the cathartic power of horror
With wildly differing roles on stage and screens both small and silver, Morfydd Clark is fully flexing her muscle for range this autumn – and she’s thriving on the challenge.
To start, the Welsh actress reprises her most famous part to date in the second season of The Rings of Power, Amazon’s huge Lord of the Rings spin-off, playing the elven warrior Galadriel (depicted by Cate Blanchett in the films). Middle-earth is, I learn, a place she feels comfortable. “As a girl, I read [the Pippi Longstocking author] Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia, about a robber’s daughter in an enchanted forest; stories about magic worlds,” she says. “I have ADHD, so I got told off at school for fidgeting and shouting, In Lindgren’s realms, kids were as naughty as me, but there, it was great to be different.”
While the Tolkien-inspired show’s first series – filmed in New Zealand – propelled Clark to international fame two years ago, she has been at work on projects closer to home. She will appear in a pair of productions at the Almeida, reviving two influential 1950s plays – John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Roots by Arnold Wesker – in the theatre’s first repertory season, ‘Angry and Young’. “On stage, you can see the whites of their eyes as they watch you,” the actress says. “That’s a good kind of kick.”
But it’s the audience who will experience fear-induced adrenaline with Starve Acre, a folk-horror film set in 1970s Yorkshire, in which Clark stars opposite Matt Smith. “I was never into horror growing up, but I increasingly appreciate it. In our world, there are things we want to rage against. There’s something cathartic in letting rip,” she says. “In horrors of the past, women were just there to be killed, but now there are strong female characters, and stories with themes that were historically ignored – like motherhood in Starve Acre. Though, it’s not great for my parents, having to keep coming to see me in these things...”
She gave a similarly magnetic performance in 2019’s Saint Maud, the superb psychological thriller in which Clark was the eponymous, religiously derailed nurse. But she is equally watchable playing amusing parts: her CV displays a versatility that explains why, in The Personal History of David Copperfield, when Armando Iannucci chose her to play both Copperfield’s frivolous fiancée and, in flashback, his mother, barely anyone spotted her dual role.
Although she seems set firmly on the path to stardom, that’s not how Clark sees it. “I’ve had a slow build. When I started getting roles, it felt like a series of flukes,” she says. “There’s no particular story I’m burning to tell. I like interpreting other people’s.”
In her next project, she’s helping breathe new life into one of the greatest stories of all time, stepping into Ophelia’s shoes in a contemporary film adaptation of Hamlet, set in London and led by Riz Ahmed, who she found ‘devastating’ to watch in action as the Dane.
“I feel lucky that I get to be such a luvvie, really,” she says, laughing. “To keep falling in love on projects and creating something out of that.”
“I’ve not got a grand plan,” concludes the chameleon performer. “I’m just amazed that my little rock keeps rolling down the mountain.” And, as her 2024 slate shows, gathering no traces of moss.
The second series of The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power is now available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. Starve Acre is now in cinemas. Look Back in Anger and Roots are at the Almeida Theatre from 10 September to 23 November.
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