Other notable film credits include Morvern Callar (2002), Minority Report (2002), The Libertine (2004), Control (2007), Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2007), Synecdoche, New York (2008), The Messenger (2009), John Carter (2012), Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016), and The Whale (2022).

[12] In Jane Eyre, Morton starred as a Yorkshire orphan who becomes a governess to a young French girl and finds love with the brooding lord of the manor.

[14][15] Janet Maslin for The New York Times remarked that Morton "embodies the role with furious intensity and with a raw yet waifish presence" and James Berardinelli wrote that the actress "forces us to accept Iris as a living, breathing individual".

[20][21] Morton earned Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress for her role, which was especially notable, considering the fact that she does not utter a single word of dialogue in the film.

Morton found wider recognition and mainstream success when she took on the part of a senior precog in Steven Spielberg science fiction thriller Minority Report, opposite Tom Cruise.

[38] In the independent drama In America (2003), directed by Jim Sheridan, Morton played the matriarch of an immigrant Irish family struggling to start a new life in New York.

In America met widespread critical acclaim, with Terry Lawson of Detroit Free Press calling the film "an achingly intimate and beautifully observed account of the immigrant experience".

Set between 1967 and 1997, the film depicts the relationship between the child murderer and Lord Longford, the politician who spent years campaigning (ultimately unsuccessfully) for her release.

[57] Morton, however, was severely criticised by the relatives of the children who were killed by Hindley and Ian Brady, but she insisted, "It is my duty as a performer to raise issues [...] we're afraid to look at".

[62][63] Roger Ebert remarked that Morton was "absolutely convincing as a plucky teenage bride",[64] and Variety magazine found her performance to be "astonishing" and "sympathetic".

She made part of an ensemble cast in Charlie Kaufman's postmodern[69] drama Synecdoche, New York (2008), alongside Philip Seymour Hoffman, Michelle Williams and Emily Watson.

In the film, she portrayed Hazel, one of the women in the life of a theatre director (Hoffman) whose extreme commitment to a realistic stage production begins to blur the boundaries between fiction and reality.

[73] Also in 2008, she starred in The Daisy Chain, an Irish horror film about a couple who after the death of their daughter, take in an orphaned girl, only to become involved in a series of strange occurrences.

[77] In the directorial debut of Jesus' Son screenwriter Oren Moverman, the war drama The Messenger (2009), Morton starred as Oliva Patterson, a widow whose husband was killed in Iraq.

[78] She was drawn to the "feminine" side of the story[79] and found her part to be "one of the first characters [she has] played in a long time where [she has] felt so much in common", as her brother and stepfather both served as soldiers in the military forces.

Morton's other project of 2009 was her directorial debut, the semi-autobiographical Channel 4 drama The Unloved, which follows an eleven-year-old girl (played by Molly Windsor) growing up in a children's home in the UK's care system, and shown through her perspective.

She provided the voice of Sola in the science fiction film John Carter, based on A Princess of Mars, which received mixed reviews and flopped at the box office.

[97] Morton was the original voice of the artificially intelligent operating system in the 2013 romantic science fiction drama Her directed by Spike Jonze, but in post-production, she was replaced by Scarlett Johansson.

[102] Nevertheless, Betsey Sharkey of Los Angeles Times observed that the actress "gives Parker such a humility within a warm humanity that you feel an obligation to stick with her through the mounting horrors".

[104] Morton starred opposite Michael Shannon in the independent thriller The Harvest (also 2013), as a controlling mother keeping her sick son in a secluded environment.

[105][106][107][108] Several critics such as Peter Debruge (Variety) and Nikola Grozdanovic (Indiewire) compared her role of Katherine to Kathy Bates' Annie Wilkes in Misery (1990).

[115] Writing for The Hollywood Reporter, David Rooney thought Morton's Kathleen was "the most satisfyingly drawn character" of the film, which he considered a "ponderous, stately affair".

[117] Genevieve Valentine, for The AV Club, wrote: "Morton might at first seem a tough sell as someone so hard-boiled, but the taciturn, untouchable edifice she presents is leaking just enough poison at the edges that we look forward to watching her strike—the sort of character a six-hour miniseries was made for".

[123] She filmed the three-part television crime drama Rillington Place (also 2016), based on the case of serial killer John Christie, who murdered several women in London during 1940s and early 1950s.

Intrigued by their relationship, Morton felt the depiction of the "psychological aspect of love" in the story "really developed [her] acting chops" but considered as a challenge "to play someone so submissive" as Ethel.

[127] The Guardian found Morton to be "strong" in her "difficult role",[128] and The Independent remarked that she "gave a fine, nuanced performance" as "a woman trapped under her husband's spell".

Also in 2022, Morton returned to the big screen in three different roles: in The Whale she played the ex-wife of Brendan Fraser's reclusive and morbidly obese professor; in Save the Cinema she starred as a hairdresser campaigning to save a local theater from closing; and in She Said, Morton played a Zelda Perkins, a former Miramax employee who revealed to New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor the details of non-disclosure agreements by which sexual assault victims of Harvey Weinstein were bound.

[117][138] In early 2008, Morton revealed that she had been "close to death" after suffering a debilitating stroke after being hit on the head by a piece of 17th-century plaster, damaging her vertebral artery, in 2006.

[8] On 20 July 2011, Morton received an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) from Nottingham Trent University, "in recognition of her internationally successful acting career".

In March 2009, Morton returned to her hometown to show her support for its children's homes and protest against the threatened closure, by Nottingham City Council, of one of the four establishments with 24 social-care staff facing redundancy.