Viggo Mortensen has long made it plain that he wants to make interesting movies that will stand the test of time. Impossibly handsome, his chiseled features could have enabled him to enjoy a comfortable career as a Hollywood leading man.
Instead, the Danish-American actor has preferred to carve out his screen identity in outstanding indie films such as The Two Faces of January and The Road, as well as his David Cronenberg trilogy - A History of Violence, A Dangerous Method, and Eastern Promises, the latter film earning him an Oscar nomination.
Of course, it was his other trilogy, Peter Jackson’s Lord of he Rings, in which he played Aragorn, that ultimately gave him the box-office clout which he tries to use to finance good films outside the studio mainstream.
At the moment, the 66-year-old is on one of his famous sabbaticals; his last meaningful work was The Dead Don’t Hurt, from 2023, dividing his time between homes in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Idaho, where he owns a house in an isolated, heavily forested area. Yet this is a man at peak happiness, which makes one question if he should be sniffing around at all in pursuit of his next project.
In his spare time, Mortensen, who is married to Spanish actress Ariadna Gil and has a grown-up son, is a renaissance man who is a talented poet, painter, and photographer. He speaks five languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, and Danish.
STRIPLV: You must have discovered the fountain of youth. You certainly don’t look your age. MORTENSEN: Oh, the lighting is quite low in this room. (Laughs) It’s probably just genetics because I haven’t been sleeping as much as I ought to; I’m leading a pretty hectic life. STRIPLV: So no weird vitamin concoction or anything? MORTENSEN: No, maybe it’s just stimulation from other people. Maybe that helps, and probably genes. STRIPLV:Do you think to yourself, “I should be at a certain point” or “I should have done this or that by now”? MORTENSEN: I second-guess myself a lot. I think a lot of actors do that a lot anyway, “Oh, I could have done that better, I could have done this,” but I also do that in life a little bit. Most of the time, I think I’m pretty good at being here, where we are right now, because I do think that’s the only real thing there is. I’m not in denial of history; I’m pretty good at saying, “Yes, I can learn from my past mistakes,” but what happened already happened, so it’s not real. What’s going to happen next hasn’t happened yet, so that’s not any more real than the past. The only thing we have is right now. STRIPLV: I read you were going to give up acting? MORTENSEN: Oh, I’ll take a break for a while every now and again. I might be more likely to do a play, where I don’t have to, than do promotion for six months. Work, ultimately, is about focusing on the work itself rather than external expectations. Awards, publicity, and box office aren’t my primary motivators. I choose projects that resonate creatively and ethically. Maintaining perspective and discretion allows me to stay centered, as does stepping back from it all for however long feels right. STRIPLV: Is it difficult to balance your life? MORTENSEN: It’s catch-as-catch-can with a lot of things in life, including being healthy, you know. Just having a routine, that sometimes is good, whether you’re getting exercise or sleeping normal hours, for me anyway, and like this, in a social environment, explaining yourself all the time, you know? I try to be myself as much as I can. I’m sitting here, but there’s something odd about it compared to regular life, that we’re sitting here in this room talking. STRIPLV: You seem very curious, by nature. Were you always like that? MORTENSEN: Yes. Even as a kid, I was active and always exploring things. Even when I was a baby, my mom told me, I would crawl out of the crib, and she would get up in the middle of the night, and I’d be gone. I was downstairs, and later, when I was a little older, I somehow managed to get out of the house. She would have to go find me. In one case, she was called by a neighbor because I crawled outside, crossed the road, and went down the road, and I was in the kitchen playing with pots and pans, and the neighbors were woken by this, you know what I mean? So that’s part of me. (Laughs) STRIPLV: Your career is quite fascinating in the sense that you really pick and choose your projects so carefully, and you seem to have slowed down on your cinematic output. Why is that? MORTENSEN: Unless I’m completely out of money and have no other way to bring in an income, I’m going to wait and wait until I find a story that I like and I feel I’ll learn something from. Otherwise, aside from making money, what is the point? I’m over four decades doing this, I’ve earned some choice, I hope. Though that could very easily disappear, and if it does, it will affect my decisions, and perhaps I’ll work to make money like I had to when I first started out. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Now, it’s about interesting stories that I want to be a part of, that I would go to the movie theatre to watch. STRIPLV: Do you go through phases of pointedly steering clear of Hollywood movies? MORTENSEN: Not at all. I don’t discriminate when it comes to budget, market, genre, or nationality. I’m not a purist, despite the apparent general consensus I’m hearing. (Laughs) Big Hollywood films can sometimes have that real bite and intelligence and creativity, yeah, but normally there are financiers plowing a lot of money into their investment, so risk assessment is key, and that can lead to very safe, sometimes dull output. Sometimes, it can result in positive, well-received output, despite the limitations. STRIPLV: Does this frustrate your agent? MORTENSEN: (Laughs) They’ll be very enthusiastic about a story, very eager to me to read it and while I’ll normally agree with them because we have a similar point of view on this, they know what I generally tend to like, a lot of the time, I’ll find something that doesn’t sit well with me, it doesn’t work and that’s all that it takes. I don’t always have a sound reason why; it’s following my gut. STRIPLV: Has your gut ever been wrong with these bigger movies? MORTENSEN: I’ve said no to projects that, in hindsight, I maybe should have done. STRIPLV: Such as? MORTENSEN: No, no, it’s not the right thing to discuss that when someone else took the part. It’s not good manners. STRIPLV: Quentin Tarantino has said he was disappointed you didn’t do The Hateful Eight. MORTENSEN: And I was too, very disappointed because he’s someone I’ve long admired, and you know, I actually auditioned for Reservoir Dogs, so it’s been a campaign of mine to work with him. Like what happens most of the time, it’s scheduling that didn’t work. I was due to promote a movie when filming started, and I had committed to that and, you know, I never back out of a commitment I’ve made. I see so many actors sometimes ignore and sacrifice that part of the process, forgetting it’s such an important factor that can decide the movie’s fate, and yeah, it just didn’t work. STRIPLV: It’s a raw example of how dog-eat-dog the industry can be. You learned that when it came to Woody Allen and getting cut from The Purple Rose of Cairo. What happened there? MORTENSEN: This actually happened to me a couple of times in the early days. STRIPLV: How did it happen? MORTENSEN: I was 26 or 27 years old, had done a few plays in New York at that point, and I was invited to his office to meet him. So I step into the office, not sure whether to stand or sit, and he says ‘hello,’ and briefly looks at me. We’re there in silence for all of 30 seconds, and he says, ‘OK, thanks for coming in.’ I was pretty despondent. I thought I’d blown a great opportunity by, well, doing absolutely nothing. But when Woody Allen doesn’t like the look of you, it doesn’t bode well. But then the next day, I get a call, and his casting director tells me, “He really likes you, you’re in.” Great, I say, what’s the part? “Well we don’t know the part, but you’re in.” So I arrive the next day at the set in Long Island, this Hollywood party scene, no idea what I’m doing. I’m told by one of the crew, “Mr. Allen will give you your lines, you know, sit tight”. This is pretty great, sitting around, watching what’s going on? Woody Allen set, a lot going on. Then, I’m led to do my scene with another actor, still given no direction. Woody comes onto set, and I see him whisper to the other actor and say nothing to me. And I’m just standing there awkwardly. “ Excuse me, Mr Allen,” I say, “What am I meant to be doing?” “Just follow his lead,” he says. “You’ll be fine. ‘The guy turns to me and says, ‘So what was it like to work with Mr DeMille,’ And I think for a second and I say, ‘Well, at first it was good but then he’s got me all dirty, I’m in a diaper and this beard on my face, I’m hanging from my two arms from this tree, I don’t know what he was doing.’ Scene ends, Woody Allen laughs. He loves the dumb actor who doesn’t know he’s playing Jesus. And that was, I’m done. And yeah, the scene was cut, never to be seen again. I told my whole family, ‘I’m going to be in a Woody Allen movie,” and they can’t believe it. And it comes out, I’m nowhere to be seen. STRIPLV: That must have stung badly? MORTENSEN: You say at that point, why am I doing this? Get all excited and then, nothing. But then I got Witness with Peter Weir and Harrison Ford soon after that. And I wasn’t cut out. (Laughs) STRIPLV: When Lord of The Rings came out, that was when you were thrown into the A-list, but you never quite became tabloid fodder. How did you do that? MORTENSEN: I think I got followed around by photographers for five minutes, but they got bored. There’s only so much marketability in photos of me walking the dog, buying coffee, or trying to find my keys. Stop the presses, he did what? (Laughs) I remember friends showing me pictures in the paper of me coming out of a donut shop, with a donut in my mouth, these bags I’m juggling, it looked awful, really unflattering. Everyone went through it. It was career-changing for all of us. Maybe not Liv Tyler or Cate Blanchett, they already had the exposure, but the rest of us, it was a positive moment. STRIPLV: So even that brief moment of paparazzism, it didn’t anger you? MORTENSEN: Lord of The Rings was a huge break for me. I didn’t know about the photographers; it didn’t last long anyway. But it did get me more work and gave me a freedom of choice I’d never had before. And that I’ll always be thankful for. When A History of Violence came up, David Cronenberg wanted me in it, but the producers had the final say, and they were happy. They were happy to have one of the stars of the biggest movie at the time. That wouldn’t have happened with Rings. And the work I’ve done since, The Road, Eastern Promises, Captain Fantastic, wouldn’t have happened either, it’s this knock-on ripple effect. Ultimately, every role shapes you differently - each project leaves a mark and teaches you something about yourself. STRIPLV: What advice would you give young actors entering the industry today? MORTENSEN: Focus on craft, not recognition. Learn constantly, observe, and challenge yourself. Take risks creatively and don’t be swayed by external pressures. The work itself is the most important measure of success. STRIPLV: How do you unwind after intense projects? MORTENSEN: Quiet reflection, nature, art, and music. Spending time with family and friends, reading, or taking long walks. These simple practices recharge me. Sometimes I just head off – do nothing, look for nothing, expect nothing. STRIPLV: You come across as someone very comfortable out in the wilderness, by yourself. MORTENSEN: I’m very comfortable in the woods, yes. I’ve grown my own food, I grow my own vegetables, and have gone hunting, yes, brought my dinner to the table, I’ve done that before. My dad used to bring my brothers and me fishing and hunting, did it all the time. So it’s a way of life I’m not unfamiliar with.
A MULTILINGUAL MIND
Why Viggo Mortensen is as much a poet as a performer. Viggo Mortensen isn’t just Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings, he’s a polyglot with a deep love of languages and poetry.
Fluent in Danish, Spanish, and English, and comfortable in French, Italian, and Catalan, Mortensen uses his linguistic skills both in film and in his personal life.
“The ability to speak many languages means you’re rarely caught short in a situation,” he laughs.
Mortensen publishes poetry and photography, often blending languages in his work. This curiosity reflects his upbringing; he was born in New York to a Danish father and American mother, then raised partly in Venezuela and Argentina.
“I always said poetry was acting, but with structure and process. It ties all the art of speaking together in a way that normal dialogue just cannot.”