While waiting to see him on the big screen in ‘Suffragette’, here is Morgan Watkins from his debut to fronting the latest Pal Zileri advertising campaign and much more… “I am honoured and very flattered, it makes me look better than I am”, confirms an amused Morgan Watkins holding a photo from the new Pal Zileri campaign in his hands. “It is all thanks to the photographer (Steven Pan,ed), I will take it home for my mother, she will love it”. The British actor who appeared in the spy comedy box office hit, ‘Kingsman – Secret Service’ together with Colin Firth, Samuel L. Jackson and Taron Egerton and of which he tells us “It was filmed in London but I think it is an international film”, is in fact the face chosen by Pal Zileri to represent a new path for next autumn/winter: a new creative director (Mauro Ravizza Krieger, nominated last winter, ed), new ideas, new objectives. “I met some fantastic people at Pal Zileri, very friendly and they all supported me. It has been great working with them”, he added, in a jacket and blue T-shirt, with his sincere and seductive smile, friendly manner, elegance and absolutely British look, just like his accent and his features. “I have done modelling before. An agent recruited me when I was 19, I was working in a supermarket and suddenly…! For me it was just a case of the money, it was a lot more than what I could hope to earn as a shop assistant”, he says. “But I have always dreamed of being an actor, I love acting. So with the money I earned I was able to pay for three years of school in London (the prestigious Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, ed). And then I began working in the theatre and for TV and film”. Despite his young age, the list of films he has appeared in is long. From his debut in 2001 in ‘Wild Bill’, directed by Dexter Fletcher, to ‘Now Is Good, The Hooligan Factory’ and ‘A Little Chaos’ without counting TV series such as Inspector George Gently and The Hour, which was nominated at the Golden Globes. “‘Chicken’ and ‘Scottish Mussel’ have only just come out and ‘Suffragette’, a great film I was very happy to appear in, will be released this autumn”. The film, which tells the story of the birth of the feminist movement at the beginning of the last century, boasts an epic cast including Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter, Carey Mulligan and Brendan Gleeson. “My favourite actor is Marlon Brando, I think he is very good. And then Robert De Niro, Vincent Cassel, Christian Bale and Eddie Marsan…To be able to watch them, study how they act and compare them with yourself, I think is the best way of learning, improving”. “I would like to be directed by an Italian director too, I think some of them are excellent, it would be fantastic for me if I had the chance” he continues. And, apropos Italy, if you ask him about this country… “I love Italy and Italian style, Italians really do have a lot of class. I, on the other hand, never know what to wear. It’s easier in winter, I usually wear a nice warm coat, but in the summer it’s more difficult, I am convinced men don’t look good in shorts, so perhaps I would opt for a vest top and a necklace, let’s say I am more ‘wild’” he laughs. “In any case I learnt about Italy through Italo-American films. I know it is not the same, but while learning to act I watched lots of them and my love for this country, for the culture, came from that. When I come here I feel I am at the home of where it all began, where it all comes from”. “I have been to Milan before, when I was 20. I modelled for Calvin Klein, Burberry and others, but I was young, I spent too much time having fun in the bars… but it was still an amazing experience, I love Milan, it is a great city”, he smiles mischievously, with a sly look in his eye. Then he becomes serious, reflective: “I am grateful for what I have got, and I am lucky enough to be able to do what I like, act. Lots of my friends go to the pub after work, I used to too, but now I am trying to grow and mature, I must behave in the best way. Because my today is better than yesterday”.
