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Iolatnthe's Quotable Viggo
24 August 2019 19:02:18 Found By: Iolanthe
This week’s look back at A Dangerous Method on 25YE contained high praise for Viggo and Michael Fassbender ‘two of the finest actors of this generation’. Not only was it great for the audience to see two such accomplished actors together, but, hey, they are both very good-looking men. So here is a Mortensen/Fassbender Quotable for you all. All that Freud/Jung psychology, it’s pretty serious stuff… er… isn’t it?
A Dangerous Method is blessed with two of the finest actors of this generation (who also happen to be two of my top three favorite actors ever, currently) as Jung and Freud. If you went into this movie blind, knowing nothing about it, but I told you the leading actors would be Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender, I guarantee you’d have bought a ticket, sight unseen.
Cronenberg’s Psychoanalytical Menage a Trois: A Dangerous Method
Will Johnson
25YE
19 August 2019
If Hampton's literate script provides the essential language, Mortensen and Fassbender do such a splendid job of turning iconic figures such as Freud and Jung into compelling people that it is a shock to hear that others (Christoph Waltz for Freud, Christian Bale for Jung) almost got the parts.
Kenneth Turan
Los Angeles Times
23 November 2011
'Viggo Mortensen -- he is the most beautiful man in the world! He is! He's just like, wow! He's such a special dude. And Cronenberg is so funny, and obviously brilliant. That was a special experience.’
Michael Fassbender, future superstar
By Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com
8 March 2011
'First of all, I was nervous. I’m about to meet Viggo Mortensen. Then, very quickly we just got along. It was just like that. He’s very supportive and generous. Obviously, he’s very well prepared. Nobody knows when Viggo is going to arrive, that’s the thing [laughs]. It was like, “Viggo will be here one of these days.” They started filming with Keira and I first. He arrives, there’s nobody at the airport to meet him because nobody knows when he’s going to be there [laughs]. He gets a rental car and turns up on the set. And slowly his trailer starts to get all this character. It was the World Cup at the time, so he’s a massive football fan, so all these flags started going in his trailer. He had a picture of the Queen of Denmark up. I was watching him from my trailer, “What’s he doing today?” [Laughs] He’s a very interesting guy. He writes poetry. He takes photographs. He’s very artistically rich. I just tried to watch him and learn as much as I could.'
Michael Fassbender on meeting Viggo
Michael Fassbender Explores A Dangerous Method with Movie Fanatic
by Joel D Amos
Moviefanatic.com
25 November 2011
"I think it's the same with every film… That's his process. These things add texture to his characters. I was never overwhelmed, because there was a real lightness and easiness to it. Viggo is a very independent soul, and a very gentle one."
Michael Fassbender
Viggo Mortensen shows his independent side
by Demetrios Matheou
Herald Scotland
4 March 2015
“Michael likes to have a good time. He likes to sing and play around, but it's all about staying relaxed and staying loose and I'm all for that. Otherwise, he's quite well prepared. His approach is different to mine. He's script-based and he likes to read the script again and again, just to be at home with the words. I also try to do that but I tend to go off the beaten path a little bit and read things I don't have to read.”
Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen talks The Two Faces Of January, singing with Fassbender and throwing a nappy at Al Pacino
GQ
17 May 2014
“Well, you know the scenes between Freud and Jung in Freud’s home office? That space was amazing, full of all these set details which tried to approximate Freud’s actual office. It’s all wood and cigars, you know? While we were shooting this one scene, where Freud’s sitting behind his desk and I’m sitting right in front of him, and we’re having this really deep conversation which turns out to last like 13 hours or something.
And in between takes—at first I don’t notice—Viggo keeps pushing these penises, no, what do you call them? Phalluses? Freud’s desk had all of these little statutes and things, and some of them were phallus sculptures from different cultures around the world. And Viggo kept pushing them towards my end of the desk. I didn’t notice at first until I looked down and saw them all, inching ever-forward, with Viggo smirking, really a prankster, dressed up as Freud. It was surreal!”
Michael Fassbender
Jung and the Restless: On Michael Fassbender's Role as Carl Jung in 'A Dangerous Method'
By Christopher Sweetapple
Pop Matters
23 November 2011
“We also had a lot of fun singing duets. In Belvedere Gardens where Freud did take his walks, and then you see him in the end, in his morning walk, we were singing at the top of our lungs, which surprised the public and some of the journalists. He has a good singing voice and I did harmony. In Belvedere, we sang that song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," including all the high notes, which Michael hit really well.”
Viggo Mortensen talking about filming with Fassbender
Viggo Mortensen Reveals How He Became Freud in ‘A Dangerous Method’
by Thelma Adams
Yahoo Movies
16 December 2011
What [other] songs did he and Viggo sing? “Anything really,” said Michael, “like ‘Young Girl’” (by Gary Puckett & The Union Gap). He was told that the song’s refrain, “Young girl, get out of my mind,” was a fitting one for his characters in both “Shame” and “A Dangerous…”
“I remember Viggo and I came bursting into the makeup room and singing. Keira (Knightley) was getting her hair done. We made her and the makeup artist jump out of their skin,” said Michael.
Michael Fassbender
No ‘Shame’ in Michael Fassbender’s sex-addict role
By: Ruben V. Nepales
The Inquirer
5 January 2012
Viggo said that on the set Michael would hop around on one leg with a large red eyepatch to prepare for his scenes. What the hell was that about?
Yes, yes, I don’t know what that was about. You’ll have to talk to Michael about it to get the story. You have to understand that Viggo, being as playful as he is, could totally be making that up.
David Cronenberg
'A Dangerous Method' director David Cronenberg talks white-hot leading man, Michael Fassbender
by Chris Nashawaty
Entertainment Weekly
23 November 2011
'Viggo and I tried to find the comedy in it, as much as possible. That was fun. I’ve always been a massive fan of him. He’s an impressive human being.'
Michael Fassbender
Michael Fassbender Explores A Dangerous Method with Movie Fanatic
by Joel D Amos
Moviefanatic.com
25 November 2011
'Viggo Mortensen is an absolute joy really, he has his work very methodically put together, he’s very precise. But he’s also got a great sense of humour, we had a lot of fun, a lot of fun doing our scene’s together. The more we did the more fun we had (laughs). It’s important as well I think when you’re dealing with very heavy material and serious material, that you keep a lightness in-between takes. So when you come to the scene a bit more loose and a bit more relaxed. That helps you find the little nuances within it.'
Michael Fassbender
Michael Fassbender Interview For David Cronenberg’s ‘A Dangerous Method’
Flicks and Bits
21 November 2011
The richly gifted Fassbender is steely, restrained, and flat-out magnificent as the ambitious Jung who places science and family before love. And as the cigar-smoking Freud, Mortensen -- sporting a nose prosthesis -- all but steals the picture with his knowing gaze and wry insights. In fact, his character injects an unexpected and delicious humor. This duo will surely be mentioned come Oscar time.
Erica Abeel
Huffington Post
11 September 2011
Mortensen and Fassbender are topnotch in their less showy but more nuanced, controlled parts and the crackling dialogue they spout at each other (courtesy of screenwriter Christopher Hampton) is convincing and compelling.
Chris Alexander
Fangoria
13 September 2010
Mortensen is so silkily persuasive an argumentative foil for Fassbender in the scenes they share that the narrative seems more a head-to-head than it structurally is.
Guy Lodge
In Contention
2 September 2011
'Working with Viggo was really special, he’s an amazing human being, and obviously a brilliant actor...'
Michael Fassbender
Sam Adams
AVClub.com
8 March 2011
You will find all previous Quotables here.
© Viggo-Works/Iolanthe. Images © Liam Daniel.
Iolanthe's Quotable Viggo
7 February 2015 09:33:25Sky Greats are advertising Eastern Promises and A History of Violence back-to-back as a Cronenberg/Mortensen February treat in the UK. So is this a Quotable about those two great collaborative efforts? Er... no. It's about A Dangerous Method. Maybe it wasn't such a spectacular success, but Viggo's performance astonished critics. I mean, Tom Stall, Nikolai and.... Freud? Who would ever have thought it? It also gives me the chance to put one of my most favourite ever quotes back into context. That credit-card busting on-screen maganetism? Yup – it was Freud.
Viggo Mortensen is the champ. Hands down. Of all the "say what?" performances some of us first heard about at last fall's Toronto International Film Festival — and which characterized 2011 as a hugely surprising year for film — none of them surprised me more than Mortensen playing Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg's "A Dangerous Method."
Jeff Simon
Buffalo News
26 January 2012
This is Mortensen's third straight collaboration with Cronenberg following "A History of Violence" and "Eastern Promises," and the ease and rhythm from working together so often pay off in the effortless grace of Mortensen's portrayal. It is some of his finest film work ever.
Clint O'Connor
The Plain Dealer
25 January 2012
Almost serenading the audience with his Austrian accent, Mortensen is instantly Sigmund Freud without a shadow of a doubt.
Brad Brevet
Rope of Silicon
10 September 2011
...there is no denying that A Dangerous Method doesn't come alive until we get our asses some Viggo. Christoph Waltz was originally set to play Freud, but was forced to drop out. At which time Cronenberg turned to his current muse. I'm sure Waltz would've done some stellar things with the character, but hot damn, Viggo sizzles as Freud.... This is a Viggo you don't think of when you think of Viggo
Joshua Miller
Chud.com
21 October 2011
It was a stroke of inspiration to cast the virile, hyper-secure Mortensen as the godfather of neurosis. Puffing on a cigar, he makes Freud a charismatic control freak, a man all too eager to engage in dream analysis yet too much of a self-designed authority figure to put his own dreams up for dissection.
Owen Gleiberman
Enertainment Weekly
10 September 2011
It's possible that in lusting after Mortensen all these years, we've taken his talent for granted. Of course, we really didn't know how talented he was until he started working with Cronenberg. This is the best thing Mortensen's ever done. His slow, paunchy, hairy Freud has a cavalier authority and a capacity for drollery. He's also seductively wise in a way that makes both Fassbender and Knightley, as very good as they are, also seem uncharacteristically callow. I don't know where Mortensen found this physical and psychological heaviness, this expressive inexpressiveness, but now isn't the time to start a diet.
Wesley Morris
Boston Globe
23 December 2011
Mr. Mortensen again reveals his amazing skills of self-transformation...
Roderick Conway Morris
New York Times
6 September 2011
It is also marvelous to see Freud, that embattled colossus, restored to his human dimensions by Mr. Mortensen. His sly performance is so convincingly full of humor, warmth and vanity that it renders moot just about every other posthumous representation of the patriarch of psychoanalysis.
A.O.Scott
New York Times
22 November 2011
Even in a period film like this one — a picture that runs the heavy risk of being ponderous and stiff — he can slip himself into the scenery with a "Don't mind me, here in my Sigmund Freud getup" naturalness….
Stephanie Zacharek
Movieline
2 September 2011
I was so taken with Mortensen's constantly alert and cunning eyes. He was always thinking, sometimes on a current that flows in opposite direction of his dialogue. It is a very effective performance, and Mortensen, one of the best actors working today, has shown us something new in his repertoire. It bodes well for his life as a middle-aged actor.
By Sheila OMalley
Capital New York
6 October 2011
Mortensen's buttoned-down and highly verbal Freud is something to behold — and also to listen to. The actor has been the quiet man of volcanic physical intensity in two previous Cronenberg films, A History of Violence and Eastern Promises. Here his tongue is more lethal than his fists, as when he tears into Jung for practising "second-rate mysticism and self-aggrandizing shamanism."
Peter Howell
Toronto Star
12 January 2012
Freud, played by the perpetual shape-shifter Viggo Mortensen, slinks around like a silent old Zen master.
by Matthew D'Abate
Your Beautiful New York
14 December 2011
Mortensen, in very much a supporting role, thrives superbly for his third Cronenberg running, summoning a peppery gravitas, and an eye-narrowing fearfulness, as the father of psychiatry might well, about patricidal impulses from his younger colleague.
Tim Robey
The Telegraph
9 February 2012
...the ever-flawless Viggo Mortensen.
Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
San Francisco Bay Guardian
26 September 2011
Viggo Mortensen has so much on-screen magnetism, he'll probably destroy the credit cards of anyone sitting in the first 10 rows.
Wallace Bain
Santa Cruz Sentinel
25 January 2012
You will find all previous Quotables here.
© Viggo-Works/Iolanthe. Images © Hanway/Lago.
Iolanthe's Quotable Viggo
12 April 2014 17:46:55Last Week Kirsten Dunst observed how funny Viggo is and suggested he should do a comedy. I'm sure we all inwardly agreed because we know just how much humour he can inject into seemingly serious roles - those which sometimes call for light touches of irony or telling looks. As he said to Dominical in 2006, he often slips irony into his roles and certainly found the funny side of Freud. He may have never played in a comedy, but he does play comedy, from Hitch's constant vocabulary suggestions, to his take on Burroughs in On the Road and Freud's drier than dry observations.
"He's surprisingly hilarious. The first time I met him, he was reserved. It was in an elevator. I was like, 'Hi.' He was like, 'Oh, hi.' I learned later he was very shy. So I was nervous, even a little scared, to work with him. I thought, 'This is going to be intense.' Then I got the whole other side, which I don't think many people know. He should do comedy, I've told him that... I'm sure he wouldn't be happy with people knowing how funny he is."
Kirsten Dunst
By Ajesh Patalay
Harper's Bazaar
May 2014
'I've never been offered comedy and don't know why. But sometimes I subtly slip ironic touches into my roles.'
Viggo Mortensen
A Multi-talented Hero
Dominical, by J. A. - translated for V-W by NacidaLibre
27 August 2006
Cleverly, the actor likes to slip a bit of that absurdity into his characters, whether they are On the Road´s Old Bull Lee or the methodical killer from A History of Violence. "For me, in all serious films, there are moments of humour." In that case, wouldn´t you like to play in a comedy? "I don´t think they would consider me for those kind of roles," says Viggo, almost regretfully. "I don´t know why, but they´ve never given me the chance."
Lost in La Pampa
By Pierre Boisson - translated by Ollie
So Film #10 (France
May 2013
In a brilliant cameo, Mortensen gets Burroughs's flat, wry voice exactly right as he denounces Moriarty as psychotic, exposes how the English translation of Voyage au bout de la nuit bowdlerises Céline's original, and hilariously demonstrates his version of Wilhelm Reich's ludicrous, once fashionable orgone boxes for the control of psychic energy.
Philip French
The Observer
14 October 2012
Even though the Beats were expert at perpetuating their own PR (so much of their work is about how great they all are) they were, you know, just guys. Young guys who thought they knew a lot more about life than they actually did. (That is, except for the spaced-out sage William Burroughs, played for marvelous laughs in quick scenes by Viggo Mortensen).
Jordan Hoffman
Film.com
7 September 2012
'I wanted to show another Freud, not the strict looking grandfather we all know, but someone in his fifties who, it's said, was handsome, funny and charismatic. How was I not to think of Viggo?'
David Cronenberg: "Nunca he ido a terapia, pero me parece una situación fascinante"
Rafa Vidiella
20minutos.es
3 November 2011
'I realized from the research is that [Freud] was very funny. He doesn't crack jokes in an obvious way, but he found a way to slip that wit and that irony into things, and in some sense, I guess that character is the comic relief in the movie. The humor helped make Freud feel like not such an impossible task to play…'
Viggo Mortensen Wants the Oscars to Start Noticing David Cronenbe
By Kyle Buchanan
New York Magazine
22 November 2011
I have no idea what Freud was like in real life, so I have no idea how well Viggo plays the Freud, but he gives the character a smug electricity that makes every moment he's on camera pop. He's quite funny too, in a droll and sarcastic sort of way, savoring Freud's many witticisms. This is a Viggo you don't think of when you think of Viggo.
Joshua Miller
Chud.com
21 October 2011
'Viggo and I tried to find the comedy in it, as much as possible. That was fun. I've always been a massive fan of him. He's an impressive human being.'
Michael Fassbender
Michael Fassbender Explores A Dangerous Method with Movie Fanatic
by Joel D Amos
Moviefanatic.com
25 November 2011
'Viggo Mortensen is an absolute joy really, he has his work very methodically put together, he's very precise. But he's also got a great sense of humour, we had a lot of fun, a lot of fun doing our scene's together. The more we did the more fun we had (laughs). It's important as well I think when you're dealing with very heavy material and serious material, that you keep a lightness in-between takes. So when you come to the scene a bit more loose and a bit more relaxed. That helps you find the little nuances within it.'
Michael Fassbender
Michael Fassbender Interview For David Cronenberg's 'A Dangerous Method'
Flicks and Bits
21 November 2011
As an admitted Viggo fanatic, it was nice to see Mortensen play second fiddle in Appaloosa. Ed Harris is Marshal Virgil Cole and Mortensen is his trusted friend and fellow gunmen Everett Hitch. The way the actors play off one another is hilarious, with Mortensen's Hitch continually assisting his partner's attempts at reading any word longer than two syllables.
Most under-appreciated performances list
Brian Zitzelman
Seattle Movie Examiner
December 2008
Mortensen is funnier than we tend to remember, and he successfully pulls of Everett's jealousy about Virgil and Allie's relationship without pushing it into homoeroticism or farce.
Katey Rich
Cinema Blend
18 September 2008
….a perfect, dryly comic Viggo Mortensen.
Tom Hall reviewing Appaloosa
The Back Row Manifesto
6 September 2008
"Good luck talking someone into that: ' History of Violence , The Road – that guy? Forget it.'"
Viggo after the interviewer suggests a comedy
On the Road, signs of the apocalypse hit home
Johanna Schneller
Globe and Mail
27 November 2009
You will find all previous Quotables here in our Quotes Section.
© Viggo-Works/Iolanthe. Images © Hanway/Lago.
Viggo Mortensen in Empire magazine
27 March 2014 17:40:32Source: Empire.
Found By: Chrissie
Categories: A Dangerous Method
Albino Alligator
Carlito's Way
Daylight
Eastern Promises
Hidalgo
Media
Movies
Scans
The Lord of the Rings
The Road
The Two Faces of January
Witness
Many thanks to Chrissie for these.
Here are scans of the article in the May issue of Empire magazine where Viggo discusses some of his movie roles:
Click to enlarge
Here are scans of the article in the May issue of Empire magazine where Viggo discusses some of his movie roles:
Click to enlarge
Images © Bauer Consumer Media.
Viggo to present award on 9 March
18 February 2014 21:00:51Source: CBC.ca.
Found By: Chrissie
Thanks to Chrissie for bringing us this exciting news!
Quote:
Viggo Mortensen, Tatiana Maslany enlisted for Canadian Screen Awards
© New Line Productions Inc.
Hollywood star Viggo Mortensen and TV's Jason Priestley and Tatiana Maslany are among the famous faces set for the upcoming Canadian Screen Awards.
Organizers unveiled today a list of familiar names who will serve as presenters for the broadcast gala celebration of Canadian TV and film in March.
Mortensen will salute Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, who will receive the 2014 lifetime achievement award at this year's gala. The American actor has been a regular collaborator with the Toronto director, having starred in Cronenberg's recent films A Dangerous Method, Eastern Promises and A History of Violence.
Organizers unveiled today a list of familiar names who will serve as presenters for the broadcast gala celebration of Canadian TV and film in March.
Mortensen will salute Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, who will receive the 2014 lifetime achievement award at this year's gala. The American actor has been a regular collaborator with the Toronto director, having starred in Cronenberg's recent films A Dangerous Method, Eastern Promises and A History of Violence.
© CBC.ca. Images © New Line Productions, Inc.
Last edited: 31 May 2023 15:42:13