Álvaro Morte has been an ambassador for Swiss watchmaker Breitling for three years. The Spanish actor, known worldwide for his role as El Profesor in La Casa de Papel, feels a strong connection to the brand. Not for reasons of appearances, but because of shared values around authenticity, tradition, and innovation. We meet him in Paris for the launch of the Navitimer B01 Chronograph 43 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team, the watch that marks Breitling’s return to F1.
Text by Anja Van Der Borght
Why did you start working as an ambassador for Breitling?
AM: “Because I feel very comfortable with them. I think we kind of share the same values. We understand luxury in a different way. And I think that we both respect and value the past and the traditions, but at the same time, the innovation. So that’s exactly what I also love in classics: theater plays that talk about something that we could talk about today, even though it was written centuries ago, but always with a new twist. And I think Breitling is doing kind of the same thing.”
You share the same luxury values?
AM: “For me, luxury is more like taking your time to decide what you really want to do. Instead of letting someone tell you what to do. It’s not about pretense or show what you’ve got. Money doesn’t have to do with it; I mean, for me, luxury doesn’t have to do with money and the image of it. So, I think Breitling is taking care of the brand in a very authentic way.”
You talk about taking the time to decide what you want. Are you the kind of person that wants to slow down or do you more want to speed up in life?
AM: “I would love to slow down much more than what I do because I’m always accelerated. Yesterday I flew from Liverpool to Madrid. I arrived at night because I’m shooting this series over there. And this morning I took a flight to come here to Paris. I’m always doing things. I’m always working. If I’m not in front of the camera, I’m always trying to think about the next thing to do. So I would love to get a little bit more time for myself and slow down, but nowadays it’s impossible.”
So what were you shooting in Liverpool?
AM: “It’s a dramatic crime and family saga called This City is Ours for the BBC, and I’m starring in the second season.”
What does time mean for you? What do you like to slow down for?
AM: “The little time I have to slow down, I will definitely spend with my family and I’ll try to do something that we both enjoy, like playing with my kids or playing some music like guitar, piano. Sometimes I play golf with my friends, but I really need to get some time for that because you need like at least two-three hours to complete a half course of golf, but I love it because it keeps me concentrated and it’s like a meditation for me, you know, so if I have more time like a couple of weeks, something like that, I’m always trying to travel around if I can, it’s not that easy for me; I would travel much more for pleasure than what I do.”
Do you have a favorite travel destination?
AM: “I’m in love with this place in the Canary Islands called Lanzarote. I don’t know if you have been there. I think it’s a very weird place, but it’s magic in my opinion. It’s so different. It’s a kind of a black desert in the middle of the ocean and with red mountains, white villages, amazing food and people and I feel very comfortable there so I try to go once a year, I couldn’t go last year, but it’s my plan to go as soon as I can.”
Talking about holidays, do you remember the last time you lost track of time?
AM: “Oh no, not at all. I’m not that kind of person that suddenly is like, oh, what was I doing? I like to be concentrated on what I do. And I hate the sensation of wasting time.”
What would be for you a total waste of time?
AM: “Sometimes I think that we sleep too much. I normally sleep six hours, but I think the human being is created in the wrong way. We should have enough with a couple of hours of sleeping, but spending seven or eight hours sleeping every day, it’s a third of your life, and for me it’s like, no, no, no, we have to do something.”
Are you someone who is usually on time or who is more of a late person?
AM: “I hate not to be on time, I’ve never allowed myself to, I mean if I have an accident or something, but I’m always on time. I always try to figure out how I can make it there on time. Not before, not later.”
Are you more of an early morning person or night owl?
AM: “Years ago I was a night guy, but now I enjoy it very much to wake up early and doing things, and when it’s noon, you have already done so many things.”
Was it your kids that changed the rhythm of your life?
AM: “Kids, work, … because when you have to be working as an actor in front of a camera, you normally get picked up to go to the shooting very early-like six in the morning, seven in the morning. I have to wake up very early. Sometimes it’s at five, sometimes at three. When you have to catch a plane, it’s like that.”
Is there an actor that you admire?
AM: “Of course, many of them. I would say someone that I admire both as an actor and as a human being, whose named was because he’s already dead, Alan Rickman, a British actor who you probably know from playing the character of Snape in Harry Potter or as the bad guy in Die Hard. He was very clever in his decisions about how to create this or that character. He was very authentic, very elegant. He was very clever, considering how he created his characters. When you listen to him in an interview, he was very calm, and had a lot of common sense, He was kind of grounded in the world, and he wanted to be like out of the fame. This is something that I admire very much.”
Tomorrow you decide what script you want to play. What would it be?
AM: “I don’t know, you know I’m that kind of actor that loves to get surprised with the offer. It’s not so much of something that I dream of doing this or that. For example, the last character that I played was Adolfo Suárez, who was actually our first president, after Franco, our dictator. So, he was a real person and he didn’t look at all like me, and it was a huge challenge. So, I would never have think that I could perform that guy. There was the casting director; he said, “No, no, it has to be you.” And I challenged myself and surprised myself by accepting the part, the role. And I’m so happy because it went very well.”
Would you do anything for a role, like if they say you have to gain 20kg, would you do it?
AM: “Absolutely, I’m at the service of the character and the performance, so I’ll do that, of course, with a health control always.”
What’s the hardest thing you’ve done so far for a role?
AM: “I think that, you know, I made this movie called Raqqa and I was performing a guy who was speaking in Arabic, like not a native speaker but someone who has been speaking fluent Arabic for a long time so, I had to learn those lines in Arabic by heart, without knowing any word in Arabic; it’s impossible. I think that’s the worst thing that I’ve done, because I had to spend like hours and hours and hours just memorizing all those lines like hell.”
Which car defines you?
AM: “I don’t know, but I have to say that in the presentation we were looking at this image of James Bond and I love the classics. So the Aston Martin that James Bond had was a car that shocked me when I was a kid watching the movies of James Bond. I was like, oh my God, that’s a car, you know? So, I don’t think that there’s a car that defines me completely, but I would tell you that I would be very comfortable driving an Aston Martin.”
I guess you’re more of a watch person than a car person?
AM: “Well, I mean, I love cars, I love this speed in a machine, but I am very much into watches, honestly. I love that it has to be a very precise, very powerful machine in a little amount of space.”
What’s your first impression of the Breitling x Aston Martin watch?
AM: “I love it. It’s a twist on the Navitimer. And I love the Navitimer. The design, I think it’s gorgeous because I can feel it perfectly, the balance between an old-fashioned and a very modern watch. I love this strap, you know, it’s leather but it looks like, in a way, like the rubber of the wheels. The design, even though it’s leather. So I think it’s a very good mix of design factors that make it feel so, for me, I think it’s very beautiful.”
When does a partnership feel authentic to you?
AM: “We were talking how when you share your values, you don’t have to sacrifice your image or when you are faithful to what you are. That Breitling for me. A part of the fact that I love their watches, the design, the mechanism inside, the engineering; they invite me to do things like today’s trip to Paris for the launch of the partnership between Breitling and Aston Martin, which is absolutely amazing. It’s always like an adventure to be doing things with them.”
If this collaboration with Breitling were a movie, what movie would it be for you?
AM: “This collaboration between Breitling and Aston Martin, obviously it should be a James Bond movie, you know, because it matches perfectly with the style of it. But I would go for a modern James Bond movie, skipping all the macho behavior of James Bond. So you’d get this kind of classic Bond vibe, but with a modern twist, so I would find, I would like to find a new James Bond, a different one.”
Who should direct the movie?
AM: “I would, me and I would play the villain. They are much more fun to play.”
Would you do your stunts yourself?
AM: “If it’s possible, I’m doing the stunts by myself. I like it. Sometimes I have to convince the producer because sometimes it’s too dangerous. But then I try to convince him to let me do it and every time they’ve allowed me to do it. I have done the stunts by myself.”
What was the coolest stunt have done so far?
AM: “It wasn’t an action stunt, but it was very cool because we were shooting Money Heist in Thailand, and there’s a moment where the professor is with a big boat, and he’s taking the people from the harbor who were coming to visit him. That every take, the boat had to return to the same place. We were departing for the harbor, and the boat had to come back to the same place. There was this Thai guy who was in charge of it, and he wasn’t able to get the boat back to the same place, and I said, “Can I try?” I was the one who was taking the boat back all the time. It’s not an action stunt, but it’s kind of cool. It’s different, isn’t it? It has to do with precision with maneuvering. That’s totally in the theme of today.”
We were talking about cars and watches. For men, these are the objects they usually treasure the most. Which objects are for you emotionally very important?
AM: “I have an electric guitar, it’s a very, very bad one but my parents gave it to me when I was 17 as a present, I think, I still keep it. It’s not a Gibson – I wish – but a black like Fender Stratocaster model, I believe, it doesn’t even have a brand, but I still keep it. A few years ago, I took it completely apart, cleaned it and I repainted it in turquoise. Now it looks like a raw or relic guitar. It looks like a destroyed instrument in a way. Another item is a watch that I gave to my father as a present when he was still alive. When I finally had a proper salary, I wanted to give him, a good gift that I could afford at that moment, and I gave him as a present a watch worth like 300 euros which was a huge fortune for me at that time – not a Breitling – and I inherited it from him when he died, so it’s also a thing. But I’m not very attached, emotionally, to objects, maybe because my family – my father was an entrepreneur – we moved many times to other places, to this new city, and in every move we were losing things in the way.”
Are you a collector ?
AM: “Not really. I like to enjoy the things that I have. It’s not that I’m obsessed with anything. I have begun collecting vinyl records, but not because I’m a collector; it’s just because I love the analog sound of them. I think they sound much better and more authentic. I have a few Breitlings, but it’s not that I’m a collector. I have instruments, I have lots of instruments, but I don’t feel like I’m a collector. It’s just that I enjoy having them, but I’m not obsessed with it so that I should have in my collection that specific model.”
The image/definition of success is changing a bit today. So what is your definition of success or how do you approach it?
AM: “For me, success is a very simple thing: Being completely able to decide what to do or what not to do in your life. Control yourself in terms of do not allow anyone to tell you what to do or what to feel or what to believe. Nowadays, I think it’s very important, especially with all the fake news and the new awful waves in terms of politics and everything. Success in your life should be you deciding what you want to be and not letting anyone tell you what to do, where to work, or who to work for, or what rules, I mean, apart from kind of the normal rules in our society. You know what I mean? Not to follow what the mass of people decide for you. That’s success.”
Is there something you think people should know about Alvaro, which they, what, you think they don’t know and which you think it’s very important?
AM: “I think some people consider me as a much more intense guy than I really am. I think that I’m quite funny and I take away all the importance of myself away from me. I do believe that I am not at all more than any other person in the world. I’m quite simple person.”
What do you wish for yourself in the future?
AM: “Years ago, I just wanted to work as an actor, for me the main thing back then having some stability. I mean, if I was able to pay the rent every month, I was more than happy, you know? If I could do that by being an actor, that was amazing. So life has treated me very well, and I think that’s because of what I’ve done: being faithful to what I think I have to do, and not accepting any work, you know, and continuing the path that you want to follow, and without wishing anything specifically, just following your own rules. I’ve arrived where I’ve arrived and I’m very happy, so it’s not that I have a target, it’s not that I have an objective or, some place to arrive; it’s just how I see myself in the future is being the same. I can tell you that I have been offered many things and I could now be very rich is I’d accepted. Offers that I have said, no to. They were coming, for example, from countries where they don’t have the same rights for women.”
You have a son and a daughter. What do you wish for them in the future?
AM: “For my daughter, I wish for her to have a real fair planet to live on. Because we’re talking all the time about feminism, and there are some people who might say, “why feminism?” I mean, feminism is absolutely necessary, because we are not in an equal position. If someone says that we are at the same level as women, I think he or she is wrong, in my opinion. So for my daughter, I wish, I really wish that she would find in the future a real balanced world where women are treated equally as men. But unfortunately, I don’t know if that’s coming. It’s absolutely necessary to put men and women exactly at the same level.”
And what do you wish for your son?
AM: “I guess it’s the same, because he’s also affected. You know, when I talk to them, and I say, “Hey, what do you think if you do the same work and she gets 20% less salary for doing just for the same work?” And their heads, you know, it blows up their minds completely. They can’t understand because it’s a natural thing, it should be the same, but it’s not. So I guess it’s the same thing. I wish for a clean, green planet, not full of plastic and pollution, but full of love. It’s not gonna happen. I know it’s not gonna.”
Breitling x Aston Martin
Breitling will be the official watch partner of Aston Martin and the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team for the next few years, and is celebrating this partnership with the launch of the Navitimer B01 Chronograph 43 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™ Team. Every element of the watch (43 mm) reflects performance: Aston Martin Racing Green and lime green accents from the Aston Martin Aramco color scheme, a lightweight titanium case—used for the first time in a Navitimer—and a carbon fiber dial inspired by materials found in the cockpit of an F1 car. The textured leather strap is reminiscent of a racing harness. The Breitling manufacture caliber, a COSC-certified chronometer with a 70-hour power reserve, is specially built for absolute accuracy under pressure. The matte black rotor with the Aston Martin Formula One™ Team logo is made of tungsten with a highly durable PVD coating. The back of the case is engraved with ‘One of 1959’ and ‘Instruments for Drivers’. The limited edition of 1,959 pieces also pays tribute to the year in which Aston Martin first competed in Formula 1. Navitimer B01 Chronograph 43 Aston Martin Aramco Formula One™, 10,500 Euro.
