Italian collector card by Piu'.
Spanish collector card by Accion. Viggo Mortensen in G.I. Jane (Ridley Scott, 1997).
Dutch postcard by Boomerang Freecards, no. P25-03. Photo: Afilm / New Line Cinema. Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003). Caption: The Journey Ends December 17th.
Peter Jackson
Viggo Peter Mortensen Jr. was born in New York in 1958. He was the eldest son of a Danish farmer, Viggo Peter Mortensen Sr., and a Norwegian-American mother, Grace Gamble née Atkinson. They had met in Norway, married and moved to New York. Through his parents, Mortensen has dual citizenship in Denmark and the United States. Mortensen spent his early childhood in Manhattan. Not long after, his brothers, Charles and Walter, were born. The family then moved to South America, where they lived in Venezuela and Argentina. Mortensen's father had chicken farms there.
By then, his parents' marriage was deteriorating, and at the age of seven, he was sent to St. Paul's boarding school in the isolated hills of Argentina. When he was eleven, his parents separated. His mother moved back to her home state of New York with her children. Mortensen then attended Watertown High School, where he became an excellent student and athlete. At the age of 22, Mortensen graduated from St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, with degrees in politics and Spanish.
He moved to Europe and started writing poetry and short stories while he worked as a truck driver, a dock worker and a flower seller. After two years, he fell in love and followed his girlfriend back to New York in 1982, hoping for a long romance and a career as a writer. Neither happened. Eventually, he found work in the service industry and began taking acting lessons at Warren Robertson's theatre workshop in New York City. After appearing in several plays, he made his film debut in the Woody Allen comedy The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), but his scenes were deleted from the final cut.
He had a small role as a young Amish farmer in Witness (Peter Weir, 1985), starring Harrison Ford. While filming The Devil's Advocate, Mortensen met Exene Cervenka, the singer of the band X. In 1987, they moved to Los Angeles and appeared in the film Salvation! (Beth B., 1987) together. They married in 1987 and had a son, Henry Mortensen, in 1988. After ten years of marriage, the couple separated in 1997.
Mortensen's performance in the play 'Bent' (1987) at the Coast Playhouse, Los Angeles, won him a Dramalogue Critics' Award. The play, which revolves around homosexual prisoners in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, was known for the leading performance by Ian McKellen, with whom Mortensen later costarred in the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003). Mortensen played the role of Frank Roberts in Sean Penn's brother drama The Indian Runner (Sean Penn, 1991). This performance prompted director Peter Jackson years later to approach Mortensen by telephone for The Lord of the Rings, the film adaptation of Tolkien's trilogy.
Vintage postcard, no. C621. Photo: New Line Productions. Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001).
French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1234. Photo: New Line Productions. Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001).
David Cronenberg
By the mid-1990s, Viggo Mortensen played supporting roles in various films. These included Jane Campion's historical drama Portrait of a Lady (1996) with Nicole Kidman, the action film Daylight (Rob Cohen, 1996) with Sylvester Stallone, and Kevin Spacey's directorial debut Albino Alligator (1996). The crime drama A Perfect Murder (Andrew Davis, 1998) with Michael Douglas and Gwyneth Paltrow was a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder (1954), and Psycho (Gus Van Sant, 1998) was a remake of Hitchcock's Psycho (1960).
In 1999, the role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson, 2001-2003) was originally cast with Stuart Townsend. However, after a few days of filming, the producers decided that he was unsuitable to embody the character of a natural leader. Mortensen was brought to New Zealand at short notice to take over the role. He threw himself into the project with dedication. One of his first scenes was the battle with the Ringwraiths on Weathertop. He quickly learned the basics of sword fighting in training with fencer Bob Anderson, which normally requires a detailed and extensive training programme. Mortensen spent a considerable amount of time with the stallion Uraeus (Brego in the films) to develop a good relationship with the horse, so that their interaction on camera would be even more convincing. After the shooting of the trilogy, he bought the horse. The film trilogy made Mortensen famous. In 2002, he used part of the money he earned to found a small independent publishing house, Perceval Press. It specialises in art, particularly critical writings and poetry. Mortensen has published several books of his poetry and photography, including 'Ten Last Night' (1993), 'Coincidence of Memory' (2002), and 'The Horse is Good' (2004).
Following the success of The Lord of the Rings, Viggo Mortensen landed a leading role in the Western Hidalgo (Joe Johnston, 2004). Then he starred in A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005) as a family man revealed to have had an unsavoury previous career. In 2007, he starred in another David Cronenberg film, Eastern Promises (2007), in which he played a Russian gangster on the rise in London. For this role, he received Golden Globe, BAFTA and Oscar nominations in the Best Actor category.
Later, he also starred in the David Cronenberg films, A Dangerous Method (2011) with Keira Knightley and the Horror Sci-Fi film Crimes of the Future (2022) with Lea Seydoux and Kristen Stewart. Mortensen earned another Oscar, Golden Globe, BAFTA Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nomination for his leading role as a committed dropout and as an anarchist father in the drama Captain Fantastic (Matt Ross, 2016). He was nominated again for these film awards for his portrayal of Tony Lip in the road movie Green Book (Peter Farrelly, 2018). Lip is an Italian-American bouncer hired to drive and protect pianist Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) on a tour through the Jim Crow South from 1962 to 1963.
In 2020, he made his directorial debut with Falling, for which he also wrote the screenplay for the first time. Mortensen had based the story on his own family's history, including his parents' suffering from dementia. He also took on the lead role and was involved as a producer. The film is dedicated to his brothers, Charles and Walter Mortensen. His second film is the Western The Dead Don't Hurt (2023), which he wrote, directed and produced. Since 2009, Viggo Mortensen has been in a relationship with Spanish actress Ariadna Gil, with whom he lives in Madrid with her son.
French postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1377. Photo: New Line Productions. Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Peter Jackson, 2002).
French poster postcard by Sonis, no. C. 1441. Photo: New Line Cinema. Viggo Mortensen in The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003). Caption: December 17th.
Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, German, and English) and IMDb.
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