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Viggo Mortensen — news, coverage & facts — IJR

1980s–1990s: First films

Mortensen's first film role was in the Woody Allen film The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), but his scenes were deleted from the final cut. He was one of the two finalists to play the title role of Tarzan in the adventure film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), though the role eventually went to Christopher Lambert.

His first onscreen appearance was playing an Amish farmer in Peter Weir's Witness. He was cast because the director thought he had the right face for the part. Although he was simultaneously cast as a soldier in Shakespeare in the Park's production of Henry V, he chose to work on Witness instead, citing a desire to try something new. Mortensen credited that decision and the positive experience on the film as the start of his film career. Also in 1985, he was cast in the role of Bragg on the TV soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and played Tybalt opposite Michael Cerveris in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet at Chicago's Goodman Theatre.

Mortensen's 1987 performance in Bent 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. The same year, Mortensen had a supporting role as Jerome Stample in the black comedy Salvation! , and played a co-lead role as a convict in the horror film Prison. He also guest starred as a police detective on the hit TV series Miami Vice. In 1988, Mortensen played a minor part as Green, the abusive husband of Jewel (Molly Ringwald), in Fresh Horses. The following year, Mortensen appeared in a minor role as Hans in Tripwire.

Mortensen made three film appearances in 1990: Edward "Tex" Sawyer, a member of a cannibalistic family in the horror film sequel Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III, John W. Poe in Young Guns II, and Cameron Dove, a military veteran suffering from radiation poisoning in The Reflecting Skin. The Reflecting Skin was Mortensen's first film to premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. The following year, Mortensen starred as Frank Roberts in Sean Penn's directorial debut The Indian Runner. Sandy Dennis, who played Frank Roberts's mother in the film and was a personal friend of Mortensen, was dying of ovarian cancer during filming. Mortensen described the filming experience as having an "undercurrent of loss," and wrote the poem "For Sandy Dennis" in her honor.

In 1992, Mortensen starred in Ruby Cairo alongside Liam Neeson and Andie MacDowell. Although Ruby Cairo was Mortensen's highest-budget film at this point in his career, it was a commercial failure, bringing in only 608,000 on its 24 million dollar budget. The next year, the film was recut and given the title Deception. Several scenes were reshot for Deception, including a sex scene between Mortensen and MacDowell, which was removed and replaced with a less intimate dialogue on a balcony.

By the mid-1990s, Mortensen was consistently making several film appearances a year. During this time, Mortensen was frequently cast in crime dramas such as Lalin Miasso in Carlito's Way, Carl Frazer in The Young Americans, Nick Davis in American Yakuza, and Guy Foucard in Albino Alligator.

Other films from that time include Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady, where he played Caspar Goodwood, a love interest of the film's protagonist, Isabel Archer (Nicole Kidman). He also acted in Crimson Tide, Daylight, A Walk on the Moon, The Passion of Darkly Noon, 28 Days, and The Prophecy, with Christopher Walken.

With a budget of $50 million, G.I Jane (1997) was Mortensen's biggest budget film appearance prior to his role in Lord of the Rings. Although the film earned his co-star, Demi Moore, a Golden Raspberry Award for her role, Mortensen's performance as Command Master Chief John James 'Jack' Urgayle was favorably received.

In 1998, Mortensen appeared in remakes of two Alfred Hitchcock movies: Psycho and A Perfect Murder (which was a remake of Dial M for Murder).

2000s: The Lord of the Rings and breakthrough

Another major mainstream breakthrough came in 1999, when Peter Jackson cast him as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. According to the Special Extended Edition DVD of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Mortensen was a last-minute replacement for Stuart Townsend, and would not have taken the part of Aragorn had it not been for his son's enthusiasm for the J. R. R. Tolkien novel. He received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Aragorn, and was ranked No. 15 on a 2015 survey of "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" conducted by Empire.

In The Two Towers DVD extras, the film's swordmaster, Bob Anderson, described Mortensen as "the best swordsman I've ever trained." Mortensen often performed his own stunts, and even the injuries he sustained during several of them, including two broken toes, did not dampen his enthusiasm. At one point during filming of The Two Towers, Mortensen, Orlando Bloom, and Brett Beattie (stunt double for John Rhys-Davies) all had painful injuries, which led to Peter Jackson jokingly referring to the three as "the walking wounded." Also, according to the Special Extended Edition DVD of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Mortensen purchased the two horses, Uraeus and Kenny, whom he had ridden and bonded with over the duration of the films.

In 2004, Mortensen starred as Frank Hopkins in Hidalgo, the story of an ex-army courier who travels to Arabia to compete with his horse, Hidalgo, in a dangerous desert race for a contest prize.

Mortensen starred in David Cronenberg's 2005 film A History of Violence as a family man revealed to have had an unsavory previous career. 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, Cronenberg related that Mortensen is the only actor he had come across who would come back from weekends with his family with items he had bought to use as props on the set.

In 2006, he starred as Captain Diego Alatriste in the Spanish language film Alatriste, based on the series of novels The Adventures of Captain Alatriste, written by the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte.

In September 2007, the film Eastern Promises, directed by David Cronenberg, was released to critical acclaim for the film itself and for Mortensen's performance as a Russian gangster on the rise in London. His nude fight scene in a steam room was applauded by Roger Ebert: "Years from now, it will be referred to as a benchmark." Mortensen's performance in Eastern Promises resulted in his winning the Best Performance by an Actor in a British Independent Film award from the British Independent Film Awards. He was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Mortensen appeared as himself in the 2009 film Reclaiming the Blade, in which he discussed his passion for the sword and his sword-work in films such as The Lord of the Rings and Alatriste. Mortensen also talked about his work with Bob Anderson, the swordmaster on The Lord of the Rings, Alatriste, Pirates of the Caribbean and many others.

In 2009, Mortensen performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States. Later that year, he joined the cast of The Road, a film adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, and collaborated with David Cronenberg for a third time on A Dangerous Method.

2010s–present: Critical acclaim

After two years, Mortensen returned to theater in 2011, starring in Ariel Dorfman's Purgatorio ("Purgatory") in Madrid. Purgatorio is Mortensen's first play in Spanish. The play is about a man and woman confined either in a psychiatric hospital or prison together. During production, Mortensen's mother became ill and he pulled out of the initial premiere date, the first time he had ever done so for a project. The play premiered from November 4 to December 18.

During production for the 2012 film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Mortensen was offered to reprise his role as Aragorn, but he declined because the character does not appear in the novel the film is based on.

Mortensen starred in the 2016 film Captain Fantastic, for which he received his second Academy Award nomination. Alonso Duralde of TheWrap praised Mortensen's performance, saying, "The movie really belongs to Mortensen, who allows Ben to be exasperating, arrogant, and impatient but also warm, loving, and caring. He's a tough but adoring father, a grieving widower and a passionate defender of his wife's final wishes, and Mortensen plays all these notes, and more with subtlety and grace".

In 2018, he starred in the film Green Book. Mortensen portrayed Tony Lip, 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. Reflecting on the character, Mortensen stated, "I was attracted to playing Tony in part because it was a different kind of character, but the main thing I liked about him was his heart". Mortensen received his third Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Lip.

In 2020, Mortensen released his directorial debut Falling, which he also wrote, produced, composed the score for and starred in alongside Lance Henriksen at the Sundance Film Festival. Mortensen had based the story on his own family's history, including his parents suffering from dementia. The film is dedicated to his brothers, Charles and Walter Mortensen.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in May 2020, Mortensen along with fellow Lord of the Rings actors Sean Astin, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, Billy Boyd, Ian McKellen, Dominic Monaghan, Miranda Otto, John Rhys-Davies, Andy Serkis, Liv Tyler, Karl Urban, Elijah Wood, writer Philippa Boyens, and director Peter Jackson joined actor Josh Gad's YouTube series Reunited Apart, which reunites the cast of popular movies through video-conferencing, and promotes donations to non-profit charities.

Mortensen was cast as British cave diver Rick Stanton in the biographical film Thirteen Lives directed by Ron Howard which was released in July 2022. Mortensen was taught cave diving by Stanton personally to prepare for the role.

Mortensen reunited with David Cronenberg in the horror sci-fi film Crimes of the Future in 2022. Mortensen reunited with Lisandro Alonso on the film Eureka. Mortensen and Caleb Landry Jones will star together in the Vietnam War thriller Two Wolves which will be directed by documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney.

He wrote, directed, and stars in a Western film titled The Dead Don't Hurt. It also stars Vicky Krieps and it was shot in Mexico.

Political activities

Mortensen volunteered for the Jesse Jackson 1988 presidential campaign.

During the press tour for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, which occurred between the September 11 attacks and the Second Gulf War, Mortensen appeared in an interview wearing a t-shirt on which he had written, "No More Blood for Oil."

In 2009, Mortensen signed a protest stating that the Toronto International Film Festival's "Spotlight on Tel Aviv" program implicitly condoned the Israeli occupation and marginalization of Palestinians. In 2015 he donated $1,000 to Irish political party Sinn Féin.

Mortensen endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for U.S. president during the primaries for the 2016 election. After Sanders failed to win the Democratic Party nomination, Mortensen endorsed Green Party candidate Jill Stein. He wrote an open letter just before Election Day 2016 in which he listed the reasons he disagreed with Hillary Clinton's policies and could not support her in the race against Donald Trump, though he thought that Clinton would be elected president. He went on to narrate a documentary, The Revolution Televised, about the 2016 presidential election and the protests in the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention.

Since 2018, Mortensen has been a member of the Catalan NGO Òmnium Cultural, a pro-independence organization dedicated to promoting Catalan culture and language in the arts and the public sphere. After Vox, a far-right Spanish party, published a tweet depicting Mortensen as Aragorn fighting various social movements, including pro-Catalan separatists, during the campaign for the 2019 Spanish general election, Mortensen wrote a letter to the editor criticizing the depiction saying, "Not only is it absurd that I, the actor who embodied this character... and a person interested in the rich variety of cultures and languages that exist in Spain and the world, is linked to an ultra-nationalist and neo-fascist political party, it is even more ridiculous to use the character of Aragorn, a polyglot statesman who advocates knowledge and inclusion of the diverse races, customs and languages of Middle Earth, to legitimize an anti-immigrant, anti-feminist and Islamophobic political group."

In May 2020, Mortensen signed an open letter urging Israel to end its blockade of the Gaza Strip. In October 2023, Mortensen signed the Artists4Ceasefire open letter to President Joe Biden, calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.

Mortensen condemned the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, calling the latter a "proud and proudly independent nation, and you should stay that way". In 2024, he and 34 activists and celebrities signed a petition urging Congress to continue sending aid to Ukraine. He also showed The Dead Don't Hurt at the Mykolaichuk Open in Chernivtsi and gave his opening speech in Ukrainian.

In May 2024, Mortensen criticized Javier Milei's Argentine government, calling him a "clown" and "a puppet of the political right".