VIGGO MORTENSEN

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

Contents

Biography

Acting career

Bibliography

Visual arts and discography

Filmography

References

External links

Biography

Mortensen was born in New York. His Danish father, Vigo Mortensen (a farm manager),^[1] and American mother, Grace Gamble Atkinson, met in Norway. His maternal grandfather was Canadian.^[2] When he was two years old, he moved with his family to Argentina. They remained there until Viggo was age eleven, when his parents divorced and his mother moved back to New York. Viggo moved with his father to Copenhagen, Denmark. Viggo and his father eventually went back to the United States where Viggo graduated from Watertown High School. After high school, he returned to Denmark, and became a truckdriver in Esbjerg, Denmark, before, again, returning to to the United States to pursue an acting career. He attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, earning a bachelor's degree in Spanish. He chose that subject because could get good grades without a lot of study, leaving him free to be in a lot of plays. At his commencement, he refused to wear an academic gown because they were made by sweatshop workers. However, after the ''Lord of the Rings'' trilogy, when he was granted an honorary doctorate by his alma mater, he did appear in the appropriate robes.
Mortensen has a son, Henry Mortensen, with ex-wife Exene Cervenka of the band X. Henry and Viggo have done public father/son poetry reading together as recently as April 2006. Mortensen is fluent in English, Danish, and Spanish, and conversant 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 loves football, and is a big fan of all time Argentinean star Diego Maradona and both the Argentine and Danish national teams, as well as Argentine club San Lorenzo de Almagro.^[3] In 1993, 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 also a fan of the New York Mets.
He has spoken out against militarism and U.S. foreign policy. In continuing with his opposition to the Bush administration's foreign policy he participated in a series of fundraisers for the Northern New York Congressional candidate from the Watertown, New York area, Bob Johnson, in September 2006.

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.) Also in 1985, he was cast in the role of Bragg on ''Search For Tomorrow''.
Prior to his casting in ''The Lord of the Rings'', Mortensen appeared in Jane Campion's ''The Portrait of a Lady'', ''Young Guns II'', ''Prison'', '', Sean Penn's ''The Indian Runner'', Brian DePalma's ''Carlito's Way'', Tony Scott's ''Crimson Tide'', Ridley Scott's ''G.I. Jane'', Rob Cohen's ''Daylight'', Tony Goldwyn's ''A Walk on the Moon'', Frank A. Cappello's ''American Yakuza'', Charles Robert Carner's ''Vanishing Point'' (remake), Philip Ridley's two films ''The Reflecting Skin'' and ''The Passion of Darkly Noon'', Andrew Davis's ''A Perfect Murder'', Betty Thomas's ''28 Days'' and ''The Prophecy'' with Christopher Walken.
Before Mortensen took the role of Aragorn, he was probably best known for playing Master Chief John Urgayle in ''G.I. Jane''.^[4]
Mortensen's 1987 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 later co-starred in ''The Lord of the Rings''. According to the Special Extended Edition DVD of '', 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 book. In the ''Two Towers'' DVD extras, the film's swordmaster Bob Anderson described Mortensen as "the best swordsman I've ever trained".

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. In 2005, Mortensen starred in David Cronenberg's ''A History of Violence''. He was nominated for a Satellite Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture for this role.
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.
In 2006, he starred as Captain Diego Alatriste in ''Alatriste'', the most expensive Spanish-language film ever made, based on the series of novels ''The Adventures of Captain Alatriste'' written by the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

Bibliography

Mortensen is also an author, with various books of poety, photography, and painting published. His bibliography includes:

★ ''Ten Last Night'' - (1993), his first collection of poetry.

★ ''Recent Forgeries'' - (1998), ISBN, 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), color and black and white photographs of a back yard swimming pool.

★ ''SignLanguage'' - (2002 ISBN), 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 ''.

★ ''Coincidence of Memory'' - (2002, ISBN 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, a book to accompany the joint exhibitions at Massey University and the Wellington City Gallery during the premiere of ''.

★ ''45301'' - (2003), ISBN, 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-X), 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, 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. This book reflects Mortensen's fondness for horses. In fact, he bought Uraeus, the horse who 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, a grey Andalusian stallion named Florian, and gave it to the stunt woman who rode the horse in place of Liv Tyler.
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 and discography

Mortensen is 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''.
Mortensen experiments with his poetry and music by mixing the two art forms. He has collaborated with guitar virtuoso Buckethead on 6 albums. 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, California.
His voice is featured on '' 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.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Other notes
1985	''Witness''	Moses Hochleitner
	''The Purple Rose of Cairo''	(scenes deleted)
1987	''Salvation!''	Jerome Stample
1988	''Prison''	Burke/Forsythe Electrocution
	''Fresh Horses''	Green
1990	''Once in a Blue Moon''		TV
	''Tripwire''	Hans
	''	Tex
	''Young Guns II''	John W. Poe
	''The Reflecting Skin''	Cameron Dove
1991	''The Indian Runner''	Frank Roberts
1993	''Boiling Point''	Ronnie
	''Ruby Cairo''	John E. 'Johnny' Faro
	''Carlito's Way''	Lalin
	''The Young Americans''	Carl Frazer
	''American Yakuza''	Nick Davis/David Brandt
1994	''The Crew''	Phillip
	''Floundering''	Homeless Man
	''Ewangelia wedlug Harry'ego''	Wes
1995	''Gimlet''	Hombre
	''Crimson Tide''	Lt. Peter 'WEAPS' Ince
	''The Passion of Darkly Noon''	Clay
	''Black Velvet Pantsuit''	Worthless Junkie
	''The Prophecy''	Lucifer
1996	''Albino Alligator ''	Guy Foucard
	''Daylight''	Roy Nord
1997	''Vanishing Point''	Jimmy Kowalski	TV
	''G.I. Jane''	Master Chief John James 'Jack' Urgayle
	''Pistola de mi hermano, La''	Juanito
1998	''A Perfect Murder''	David Shaw
	''Psycho''	Samuel 'Sam' Loomis
1999	''A Walk on the Moon''	Walker Jerome
2000	''28 Days''	Eddie Boone
2001	''	Aragorn
2002	''	Aragorn
2003	''	Aragorn
2004	''Hidalgo''	Frank Hopkins
2005	''A History of Violence''	Tom Stall
2006	''Alatriste''	Diego Alatriste y Tenorio
2007	''Eastern Promises''	Nikolai Luzhin
2008	''Good''	Halder	Post-Preduction
	''Appaloosa''	Everett Hitch	Pre-Production

References

1. Film Reference website
2. Rootsweb Celebrities website
3. Interview with Clarín
4. Mortensen's battle scars Stephen Applebaum

External links

★ All Things Viggo All Things Viggo - Unofficial Fansite and Forum

★ Perceval Press A small press founded by Viggo Mortensen

★ Charlie Rose A discussion about "A History of Violence"

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★ Spanish Interview on youtube [1]