Álvaro Morte: "When they stop you on the street thousands of kilometers from home, what puts you in your place is going down to buy bread"

Alvaro Morte

.

Algeciras, 1975. Actor.

After almost 20 years in the profession,

made him a worldwide phenomenon.

The series ended, but he remains.

He is now Juan Sebastián Elcano in

, now on Amazon Prime Video.

Yes, we have lost that spirit.

We would have to be a little more adventurous, a little more battle-hardened in general.

It is impressive that everything that is happening in the world is happening and we only selectively put on the battery.

We should think more in global terms and try to foster unity as a society to face so many problems and injustices.

Yes, it could happen.

For this reason, to prevent them from appropriating him, what I have done with the character of Elcano is a very left-wing type, who always seeks consensus among his men, who pursues the common good and not his own good, and who submits to a vote the big decisions you make.

My Elcano is very much to the left and zero totalitarian.

Indeed, lately I've done period and adventure things and I've had a great time.

It's always a lot of fun to get into sword fighting or power waves, but what I feel like doing now is doing a comedy.

The ideal thing for an actor is not to be pigeonholed, enjoy the genre that comes your way and get the most out of it.

There is a bit of that.

In life I try, whenever possible, to take things with humor because humor connects you a lot with yourself.

It is true that you look back and say: "My mother, my mother, but what is this happening to me?"

So, in order not to take my feet off the ground, this thing about fame and success I take it as a laugh.

Any.

I started Teleco and my first adult decision was to leave it, because there was something there that didn't quite fit.

I liked technology, physics and mathematics very much, I still like them, but I didn't see myself there.

And suddenly, in that

to see what I do with my life, the theater crossed the middle and dragged me by surprise.

Not at that time.

Later, I did begin to remember myself as a child enjoying Spielberg or Zemeckis movies a lot and I do think there was something there, but I didn't know it.

The same for having grown up in an Andalusian town are things that you do not get to consider as a possibility for the future.

It's like: "No, no, no, here we all have to be engineers, architects, doctors and lawyers."

We are from that generation in which our parents had worked very hard and were obsessed with you having a career, a future and stability.

What was said so much about studying a career with exits, if possible science.

I love music and compulsively buy instruments, but without knowing how to play them.

I put on, I try to get the sound out of them, but I recommend you not to go near my house that day because it's absolutely terrible.

The last thing I acquired, with the pandemic, was a piano, which was my pending subject.

I have always liked it very much and I tried to get something out of it in this confinement, but it was useless.

Before I bought a viola, a trumpet, a slide trombone, I have several guitars...

I have a better one.

Michelin star reviewer.

They invite you everywhere, they give you the best food...

Well, there are plenty of wonderful restaurants that you don't end up feeling like you're on top of, either.

To me, point me to that.

I prefer not to classify myself as that because, truly, I tell you with all humility that I have always tried to be just another worker, like most of my colleagues.

Now I have been lucky that life has put me at the right time in front of the right people with the right project and the flute has sounded.

I feel very fortunate and very honored to have been able to defend a project like

, but every project I start I try to do from scratch, as if it were the first.

I do not take anything for granted, quite the opposite: everything remains to be done.

It's just that it's something that happens to many actors all the time, even consecrated people who suddenly disappear.

I'm not going to say names, but we can all think of an actor or an actress of "gods, what happened to this person who worked so hard over the years and suddenly never again?".

There is always an uncertainty associated with the work of interpretation.

Right now I am working a lot, I feel completely lucky, but I remember a lot about my colleagues: there is 98% unemployment in the acting profession in this country.

It is something not to be taken as a joke, there are many people suffering and it is something that almost all of us who dedicate ourselves to this have experienced.

When you have not had to pay the rent at the end of the month, it is very difficult to forget it no matter how well it goes.

Of course.

That is why you have to be aware that one day you are up, the next day you are down again and nothing happens.

The only thing you have to do is try to stay in the gap, do your job to the best of your ability always and that's it.

It is true that it has been a tremendous process and there are things that you can no longer do.

There are aspects in which you are limited by that beastly fame: you lose privacy and anonymity and it is difficult to manage it at times.

But you have to try to value things as a whole: it is true that this part is bad, but it has brought me many positive things.

I try to hold on to that to alleviate that negative part a bit.

Yes, I have not left.

It may have been age, although I also believe that age is just a number.

There are absolutely mature 15-year-olds and 50-year-olds who say: "Holy shit, what a horrible management you're doing of this."

In my case, I sincerely believe that you have to face life with the greatest humility and, if you see it from that perspective, fame is more bearable.

No, and sometimes my friends also tell me: "But, man, you don't allow yourself a whim, give yourself a joy" (laughs).

Well, I allow myself the luxuries that I like, like buying a viola.

That someone will say: "What do you want a viola for if you are not going to use it?".

Well, that's precisely why it's a luxury.

I believe that you have to maintain a young spirit in whatever you do: a trip, work, enjoy dinner with friends... It is healthy to maintain a young spirit, understanding youth as that fresh part in which you allow life to may surprise you.

Not from inexperience or from continuing to be the crazy goat that we have all been, but indeed there are times when you wake up and you have gray hair.

Boy, it's normal, there it is and great.

Nothing happens.

Yes, fatherhood, your colleagues, your family, your neighbor, going down to buy bread in the same place as always and being greeted normally.

"Hello, good morning, what do you want?"

"'You're going to give me two bars."

So calm, see you later and that's it.

Those kinds of things are what put you very much in your place, because then, suddenly, you arrive in a city thousands of kilometers from home and people stop you on the street.

That is rare, very rare, but there comes a time when you understand that this is how it is and you try to assume it without further ado.

What else can you do?

What's up, what's up

Quite the contrary.

The Professor is a character that I've had an incredible time doing, that I've had some wonderful colleagues and that, hell, has opened many doors for me.

He has changed my life for the better.

I could never hate that man.

That's how it is.

It's an incredibly difficult gig where there's very little reaction time, very little prep time and you have to try and salvage that sequence no matter what.

Being in

, I did 10 or 12 sequences a day, you came home and you had to start preparing and memorize the 10 or 12 the next day.

The work that the daily series do in this country is absolutely spectacular.

And it is also a wonderful quarry of actors: Inma Cuesta is wonderful, Itziar Miranda is an actress like the top of a pine who should win all the awards in this country of acting.

These series should be valued much more.

In addition, there is a demanding public that loves this type of fiction and does not care if we put a wonderful thriller on prime time.

They don't want to see

, they want to see

and they deserve exactly the same respect.

There was a time years ago when I learned to relax when he saw me.

It happens a lot to us actors that you do a job and then you get frustrated that they do something with it that is not what you had imagined.

Then you learn that you have to think that you are part of a team and that you do not do the work but a part of the work.

There is a person who has written a script, another who is going to direct it, another who is going to edit it, another who is going to put a sound on it... Your interpretation can vary incredibly depending only on the music they put on it.

If you're staring into infinity and put on some haunting or comedic music, your performance is already changing.

The moment you understand that, you can no longer get upset because the final result is not what you imagined and it is a little easier to see yourself on screen.

Holidays.

Before anything else, vacation.

I have been extremely lucky to be working for a long time in a row and now I need to have a certain amount of calm, select projects without haste.

There are offers out there that I am going to analyze calmly, but right now I feel like resting and giving a little distance.

That is an absolutely incredible luxury that today, in a certain sense, I can afford.

It's not that I can choose which director I want to work with, but it is true that there are several things on the table and I can decide which one I want the most.

I'm aware that this is something that's happening to me now and I don't know how long it lasts, but, well, it's like being invited to dinner at an amazing restaurant: "Holy shit, I'm so lucky to be able to have this for dinner today; I don't know if tomorrow I'll have to eat a squid sandwich, but right now I can enjoy everything".

And so I take it, enjoying this moment because I don't know what will happen tomorrow.

It's just that life is like that: it can surprise you just the same on one side or the other.

I was surprised by the success of

It changed my life, it put me in a place I didn't expect.

Fantastic, enjoy it, but it would be stupid to forget that tomorrow, suddenly, life can put me on the opposite side and nothing would happen either.

I would adapt and that's it.

We think too much about things out of our control.

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