Age: 40
male
Colin Morgan is an actor from Northern Ireland. He is known for playing the title character in the BBC fantasy series Merlin (2008–2012), Leo Elster in Humans (2015–2018), and Billy Clanton in Kenneth Branagh's Belfast (2021). Morgan made his London theatre debut in 2007 as the title character in DBC Pierre's Vernon God Little. He went on to appear in the theatre productions Pedro Almodóvar's Todo sobre mi madre ("All About My Mother") in 2007, Thomas Babe's A Prayer for My Daughter in 2008, Pedro Miguel Rozo's Our Private Life in 2011, Step in Time at The Old Vic 24 Hour Musicals Celebrity Gala in 2012, Shakespeare's The Tempest in 2013, and Jez Butterworth's Mojo during 2013 and 2014. In July 2008, Screen International named Morgan as a "Star of Tomorrow". For his performance in Merlin, Morgan was nominated for Outstanding Actor (Drama) in the Monte Carlo TV Festival Awards in 2009, 2010, and 2011, and Best Actor in Drama Performance: Male in the National Television Awards in 2013.
The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that Shakespeare wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, the rest of the story is set on a remote island, where the sorcerer Prospero, a complex and contradictory character, lives with his daughter Miranda, and his two servants—Caliban, a savage monster figure, and Ariel, an airy spirit. The play contains music and songs that evoke the spirit of enchantment on the island. It explores many themes, including magic, betrayal, revenge, and family. In Act IV, a wedding masque serves as a play-within-the play, and contributes spectacle, allegory, and elevated language. Though The Tempest is listed in the First Folio as the first of Shakespeare's comedies, it deals with both tragic and comic themes, and modern criticism has created a category of romance for this and others of Shakespeare's late plays. The Tempest has been put to varied interpretations—from those that see it as a fable of art and creation, with Prospero representing Shakespeare, and Prospero's renunciation of magic signaling Shakespeare's farewell to the stage, to interpretations that consider it an allegory of Europeans colonizing foreign lands.
