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Viggo Mortensen

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Viggo Mortensen at the world premiere of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, in Wellington, New Zealand.

Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. (born October 20, 1958) is a Danish/American theater and movie actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He is best known for his role as Aragorn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

Acting Career

After several years of experience in live theater, he made his first movie appearance playing an Amish farmer in Peter Weir's Witness. (Mortensen had actually been cast in two prior films - Swing Shift and The Purple Rose of Cairo - but his scenes in both of these films were deleted from the final cuts.) He has also appeared in Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady, Sean Penn's Indian Runner, Brian DePalma's Carlito's Way, Tony Scott's Crimson Tide, Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane, Tony Goldwyn's A Walk on the Moon, Philip Ridley's Reflecting Skin, Andrew Davis's A Perfect Murder, Betty Thomas's 28 Days, The Prophecy with Christopher Walken, and David Cronenberg's A History of Violence.

Mortensen's performance in Bent at the Coast Playhouse, Los Angeles, won him a Dramalogue Critics' Award. Coincidentally, the play, about homosexual concentration camp prisoners, was originally brought to prominence by Sir Ian McKellen, with whom Mortensen co-starred in The Lord of the Rings. According to 'Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Special Extended Edition DVD', Mortensen was a last-minute replacement in the role of Aragorn for Stuart Townsend, and wouldn't have taken the part if it hadn't been for his son's enthusiasm for J. R. R. Tolkien's trilogy.

In 2004, he starred as Frank Hopkins in Hidalgo, the story of a Pony Express courier who travels to Arabia to compete with his horse, Hidalgo, in a dangerous race for a massive contest prize.

Bibliography

Includes but is not limited to:

  • Ten Last Night (1993), his first collection of poetry;
  • Recent Forgeries (1998), ISBN 1-889195-32-4 5th Edition, documents Viggo's first solo exhibition and includes a CD with music and spoken-word poetry. Introduction by Dennis Hopper;
  • Errant Vine (2000), limited edition booklet of an exhibit at the Robert Mann Gallery. Only about 300 were published at the time of the exhibition so it is a very rare book;
  • Hole in the Sun (2002, ISBN 0972143610), color and black and white photographs of a back yard swimming pool;
  • SignLanguage (2002 ISBN 1889195499), a catalog from an exhibition of his works, combining photographs, paintings, and poetry into a multimedia diary of his time in New Zealand while filming The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring;
  • Coincidence of Memory (2002, ISBN 0-9721436-0-2 Third Edition, in this book, the artist combines photographs, paintings, and poems that cover his artistic output from 1978 to 2002;
  • Mo Te Upoko-o-te-ika/For Wellington (2003), ISBN 0-9721436-8-8, a book to accompany the joint exhibitions at Massey University and the Wellington City Gallery during the premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King;
  • 45301 (2003), ISBN 0-9721436-3-7, Abstract images, fragments and phrases from poems create this photography book. Many of the photographs were shot during travels to Morocco, Cuba, and the northern plains of the United States;
  • Un hueco en el sol (2003), a small booklet was published to accompany the exhibition "Un hueco en el sol" at the Fototeca de Cuba in Havana. In Spanish;
  • Miyelo (2003), ISBN 097214367X), a series of panoramic photographs of a Lakota Ghost Dance. It also tells about the events leading up to the massacre at Wounded Knee;
  • The Horse is Good (2004), ISBN 0-9747078-1-3, a photography book partly shot during his work on the film Hidalgo about horses as partners, teachers, and fellow travelers. Images from Morocco, South Dakota, Montana, California, Iceland, New Zealand, Denmark, Brazil, Argentina.

With part of his earnings from The Lord of the Rings, he founded the Perceval Press publishing house — named for the knight from the legend of King Arthur — to help other artists by publishing avant-garde works that might not find a home in more traditional publishing venues.

Visual Arts

Mortensen is also a painter, and photographer. His paintings are frequently abstract, and often contain fragments of his poetry in them. His paintings have been featured in galleries worldwide, and several appeared in A Perfect Murder.

Discography

Mortensen experiments with his poetry and music by frequently crossing over the styles. The guitarist Buckethead collaborates on many of his recordings.

His discography includes: Don't Tell Me What to Do, Intelligence Failure, One Less Thing to Worry About, One Man's Meat, Live at Beyond Baroque, The Other Parade, This That and The Other, Live at Beyond Baroque 2, Pandemoniumfromamerica, and Please Tomorrow.

His latest cd/dvd '3 Fools 4 April' documents the poetry readings given on April Fool’s Day 2006 at the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, Ca. featuring also his son Hank & Scott Wannberg.

His voice is featured on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack - he sings 'Aragorn's Coronation', the words by Tolkien but the music composed by Mortensen himself. His poems are written in English, Danish, and Spanish.

Background

Mortensen was born in New York City, although spent some childhood years in Venezuela, Argentina, and his father's native Denmark, before returning to high school in Watertown, New York (where he was captain of the swim team). He graduated from St. Lawrence University in 1980.

His Danish father and half-Norwegian mother met in Norway. Henry and Viggo have done public father/son poetry reading together as recently as April 2006.

He has a son, Henry Blake (Hank), with his ex-wife Exene Cervenka of the band X.

A polyglot, Mortensen is fluent in English, Danish, Spanish and somewhat fluent in Norwegian. He also speaks French, Italian, and Swedish reasonably well. Mortensen has dual citizenship in the US and Denmark.

Mortensen is an ice hockey fan, particularly of the Montreal Canadiens. He also likes soccer and is a big fan of the Danish national team and the Argentinian team San Lorenzo de Almagro. In 1992 Mortensen went to Ireland during a break in shooting, without the consent of the production company, to watch Denmark play in an important match. He is a fan of the New York Mets.

In the Two Towers DVD extras, the film's swordmaster Bob Anderson described Mortensen as "the best swordsman I've ever trained".

In the DVD extras for A History of Violence, David Cronenberg relates that Mortensen is the only actor he'd come across who would come back from weekends with his family having bought items to use as props on the set.

Mortensen is very fond of horses, and shows such in his book The Horse Is Good. In fact, he bought the horse which played Brego in The Lord of the Rings movies (Roheryn in the books), which is Aragorn's steed; as well as TJ, one of the horses who played Hidalgo. He also purchased the stallion that played Arwen's horse, and gave it to the stunt woman who rode the horse in place of Liv Tyler.

He has spoken out against militarism and U.S. foreign policy. [1]

Quotes

  • "It is all one thing, there are different ways of expressing yourself."
  • "You don't have to make something that people call art. Living is an artistic activity, there is an art to getting through the day." [2]
  • "I agree with the Native American author Black Elk who said that 'any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions.'"
File:Viggo.jpg
Viggo Mortensen in Santa Monica showing his support for the Dropping Food On Their Heads is Not Enough: Benefit For RAWA CD circa 2002
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