© Hanway/Lago.
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
Casting
[The Film] gave [Cronenberg] the chance to portray a Freud rarely seen in pictures: not the frail, thin, cancer-ridden old man of the popular imagination, but a vital and handsome man of 50 at the height of his powers: "Handsome and masculine, charismatic, witty, incisive, seductive. All these things. I thought we'd have to cast it in not the usual way that people cast Freud."
David Cronenberg goes into the mind for his new movie about psychiatry
By Jay Stone
Canada.com
11 September 2011
"...[Cronenberg] was in a jam. It was just last, not totally last minute, but pretty late in the pre-production. The actor that was supposed to play Sigmund Freud [Christoph Waltz] decided to do another movie so they had to recast. ."
Viggo Mortensen
The Deliberate Method of Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud in 'A Dangerous Method'
By Stuart Henderson
Pop Matters
17 November 2011
'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 phoned Viggo. I said, "I know that you weren't interested in playing Freud but it's come up for grabs again and I would be remiss if I didn't ask you if you wanted to do it." He said, "Let me look at the script," and in two days he was doing it.
David Cronenberg on Viggo taking over the role from Christoph Waltz
David Cronenberg on Freud, Keira and pressing the flesh
Brian D. Johnson
Maccleans.ca
25 August 2010
"If I hadn't known that David was kind of crazy already I would have felt he was definitely insane..."
Viggo on being asked to play Freud
TIFF video interview
11 September 2011
'I accepted the challenge because I trusted David. The last thing he wants to do is miscast his movies, when it's someone like me who's his friend. He thought I could do it and didn't let go of the idea, so I thought there must be something to it.'
Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen: 'A Dangerous Method' Taught Me How to Talk in a Movie
By Michael Hogan
Moviefone
23 November 2011
Mortensen believed he could pull him off, and so did the director. "That's the magic of casting," Cronenberg quips. "It's a black art."
'A Dangerous Method': David Cronenberg's Mild Manner and Outrageous Movies
By Stephen Galloway
Hollywood Reporter
7 September 2011
"If it had been another director I may have been more cowardly about it, but with David I knew I would be in good hands."
Viggo talking about accepting the part
LFF 2011: A Dangerous Method Press Conference
24 October 2011
"The scrip of A Dangerous Method written by Christopher Hampton ( from his play) enchanted me from the first reading. During the filming, like Michael (Fassbender) and Keira (Knightley, involved with Jung and studying with Freud), I was completely trapped by the emotional and complicated human relationships in the film. Bodies and thoughts, words and life choices are interwoven, although the latter are "contaminated" by the social conventions."
Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen: Interpreting the soul of Freud
By Giovanna Grassi
Sette Magazine - translated by Ollie
September 2011
VC: Viggo and I will be reunited in this movie, is that down to chance?
DC: It's a matter of perfect casting. As you say, there's a strange similarity in the relationships between your two characters in these two movies. In Dangerous Method, you play Otto Gross, a very crazy psychoanalyst, a kid of antisocial agitator. And the master, the controller, is Freud, sure enough, played by Viggo. In the beginning we were thinking of someone else to play Freud, so it could have been not between you and Viggo. But fate decreed otherwise. When luck is with you, you end up with the people you need to have. But it wasn't that I felt any obligation to re-unite you. If the role did not suit you, it would not have been a service to you to offer it.
Vincent Cassel talking to David Cronenberg
Première France
May 2010
