19 MARCH 2015 23

Journalist Kristien Morato (née Gij-bels, 26) grew up in the small town of Hamont, in Limburg, but fol-

lowed her heart and moved to Califor-nia. She is the youngest and first ever Belgian member of the Hollywood For-eign Press Association (HFPA).

First things first, Kristien: the love story! We would love to hear more about the love of your life and how you met him.“I met my husband Jack in 2008. He is a police officer in the US Air Force and was stationed in Kleine Brogel. I was still in college at the time. My friends and I came back from a night out when we ran into Jack and his friends in the city center of Hasselt. We ended up chatting for almost an hour. It just happened, almost like it was meant to be. We exchanged numbers and started texting each other. We started dating a couple of months later. We have been together for seven years and married for almost five. We got engaged in 2009. I applied for a K1 visa (a fiancée visa) and

moved as soon as I graduated. We got married on the beach on Coronado Island in San Diego, in front of our family and best friends. It was a small and romantic ceremony with some twenty people, but it was perfect. My mom and my two best friends flew over from Belgium.”

How did you end up becoming a Hol-lywood reporter? “My parents pushed me to go to Sint-Hubertus College, a very strict school in Neerpelt, something I am still grate-ful for. When I was in my last year of Journalism at XIOS Hogeschool in Has-selt, my dad suddenly passed away. I was in bed for two weeks, didn’t want to go back to school until I realized that my dad would have loved to see me gradu-ate. So I went back to school, in San Di-ego, where Jack was living at the time. That’s where I finished my last year. For my internship at Vitaya Magazine in Antwerp, I went back to Belgium. Once I moved back to the US, I started work-ing for Het Laatste Nieuws and hln.

be. Hollywood is so much fun, and I re-ally can’t imagine myself sitting behind a desk at the newspaper every day… I need to go out and do things.” And now you are the first Belgian and youngest HFPA member ever. Tell us more! “Last year I received a phone call from one of the HFPA members who told me he wanted me to become a member too because he thought I was a good journal-ist. To apply for membership, you need two sponsors who are members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and you need to prove that you are an en-tertainment reporter by showing at least four press clippings from the past year. In addition, you have to live in Southern California and be a member of MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) for at least two years. My sponsors, from France and Germany, really campaigned for me. I ended up getting the most votes ever and I joined the association back in May. It’s been an amazing journey, and

I’m thankful to be a part of it. We get to interview so many people (around 300 interviews a year) and we get to travel the world. This year was my first year attending the Golden Globes, and it was magical. My husband and I got to walk the red carpet, a great experience. Liter-ally everybody in Hollywood was there.”

This year you attended the Academy Awards for the fourth time in a row, but the 2015 edition was extra spe-cial because of your exclusive dress. How did all that happen?“Belgian fashion designer Nicky Vankets had offered to design my Oscar dress. Since I love his work so much, I gave him ‘carte blanche’. I still can’t get my head around the fact that he made the perfect dress without even meeting me in person once. I went to a local tailor to get sized, sent all the info to Nicky and two weeks after he finished it, my dress arrived in California. The dress was a big hit on the red carpet, people came up to me to ask me who designed it. I will never forget this wonderful experience, especially be-cause I got to keep the dress!”

Kristien Morato, Flemish Reporter in Hollywood

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KRISTEN MORATO continued on page 24

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I can imagine you meet lots of inter-esting people. What are the three en-counters you will remember for the rest of your life? “Well, there is definitely Mick Jagger, be-cause… he is Mick Jagger. He talks a lot but at the same time, he doesn’t say any-thing at all. His wife had died a couple of months before the interview, and it was the first time he was doing interviews after she passed away. I saw him again the same night at a party, where he was dancing with a very young woman. He is a very interesting figure to say the least…

And then there is Brad Pitt. The in-terview took place at Tribeca Grill, a restaurant owned by Robert De Niro. We met upstairs and we had to take the employee elevator. Everything was kept a secret, but people still found out. He was late and fans and photographers were waiting outside just to catch a glimpse of him. He was very open and talked about his wedding, his children and of course Angelina. I will always re-member my interview with her too, be-cause I made her cry.

I interviewed her for Unbroken, a movie about the life of Olympic hero and WWII veteran Louis Zamperini that she directed. Zamperini, a good friend of Jolie, passed away while they were still editing the movie. I first interviewed her two weeks after his death and ob-viously she was very emotional. When I interviewed her again in December, and asked her how much of an emotional journey making this movie had been for her, she got tears in her eyes. She was such a great interview…”

You travel a lot, what is your favorite place, besides California of course?“I go to New York a lot, because most of the interviews are either in Los An-geles or New York. It is one of my favor-ite cities in the country because I have been there many times and I know my

way around. I always try to go to my fa-vorite Belgian restaurant, the BXL Café. http://bxlrestaurants.com I made a few Belgian friends throughout the years and I always meet them there. It’s a nice place. And as a bonus, the staff al-ways hooks me up with (a) Gini (soda), one of the things that I miss the most

about Belgium! The only downside to traveling are

that I basically live out of a suitcase and it does get a bit lonely after a while. I spend half of the year in hotel rooms, so obviously I miss my husband and my three dogs (I have two Great Danes and a Chihuahua). But my job allows me to

visit places I would normally not even think of visiting, like Santa Fe, Atlanta, Toronto or even Cancun.”

Do you miss your home country too? “Not really, no. Of course I miss Bel-gium from time to time, but the more I go back there, the more disappointed I get. I think it’s because so much has changed ever since I moved to Califor-nia five years ago. All my friends have jobs now, they are married, have a family... and they don’t go out very of-ten anymore. It’s really hard to keep in touch with them because of work, and the time change … But I really miss my mom, my sister and my godchild, Milla, and the fact that I don’t get to visit my dad’s grave. I miss frites, mayonnaise, frituur, kebab, preparé, paprikachips, my mom’s spaghetti, bread from ‘de bakker’, and last but not least: being able to go out as long as you want (no last call!).

But you would never consider mov-ing back to Belgium?“Never! I have never been happier than I am right now. I really love my life with my husband and dogs, here in California. I feel at home here and am much hap-pier than I ever was in Belgium. I have dual citizenship but I feel more American than Belgian. I think in English, I dream in English and talk to my dogs in Eng-lish. The last time I was in Belgium, my friends even told me that I was getting an accent in Dutch. Sometimes I have trou-ble speaking it, especially when it has been a couple of weeks. Luckily I am still writing in Dutch, otherwise I would have forgotten a lot more. When I speak Dutch now, I tend to use more English words because I can’t come up with the Dutch word. But I’m sure this is something that happens to every expat after a while…”

– Leentje De Leeuwfrom-chicago-with-words.blogspot.com

Kristien Morato in her dress by Belgian fashion designer Nicky Vankets at the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, California.

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