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Several recent interviews have once again highlighted Viggo's maverick film career, one that goes forward without a plan, following what interests him and what he believes will interest others. His care for his craft and the roles that he's taken have earned respect throughout the industry, and it's an attitude that has served him well over the years, making him - despite his refusal to pursue what others would regard as a 'career' - 'one of the last great leading men standing' (Men's Journal 2009).



© Good Films.


He never had Champagne dreams and caviar wishes...

Viggo Talks and Talks
By Zoe Heller
T Magazine
2December 2011



...arguably the most unconventional, maverick A-list actor around.

Five Things We Learned In Toronto From The 'A Dangerous Method' Star
Oliver Lyttelton
The Playlist
14 September 2011



" .....my goals aren't the same goals that other people have that are perfectly justifiable on their own terms: wanting to be famous, wanting to make lots of money, wanting to win Oscars or something. It's not my main reason for doing it. My main reason for doing it is because I am drawn to it."

Viggo Mortensen
Things are getting 'Good' for Mortensen
By John Clark
SF Gate-San Francisco Chronicle
23 January 2009



'I don't really have a game plan. I've never really had one. Some people say, "Hollywood prefers this now," and I always go, "What is Hollywood? I really don't know what that is." I don't plan to do big or small movies.'

Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen: 'A Dangerous Method' Taught Me How to Talk in a Movie
By Michael Hogan
Moviefone
23 November 2011



"To find a good story, you're generally going to find it in independent or lower budget movies... I wouldn't mind doing a big budget movie if it had a great story."

Viggo Mortensen
Five Things We Learned In Toronto From The 'A Dangerous Method' Star
Oliver Lyttelton
The Playlist
14 September 2011



The thought about Viggo Mortensen not feeling home in this city is not far away. He is at the same time too much and too little for Hollywood.

Viggo from Hollywood
by Poul Hoi
M/S (Danish magazine), 2001



"If he chose to be a movie star, he could've done it a long time ago. . . . He's in control. That's the bottom line."

Joe Johnston
A Man of Many Parts
Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post, 2004



"Viggo's turned down quite a few things that might have made a difference in his life because he just didn't connect with them creatively. Viggo is his own man. He's not dictated by the Hollywood horseshit machine."

Don Phillips
The Hero Returns
By Tom Roston
Premiere 2003



Not for him the quick cash-in roles, the wham-bam-thank-you-mam blaze of multiplex fodder that would have no doubt made him a very wealthy man.

Long Live the King
by Paul Byrne
Wow.ie, 2004



'I haven't done the biggest movies I could find one after another, which was an option after Lord of the Rings. But when you choose to go with your heart rather than career ambition, then your star tends to wane a little bit.'

Viggo Mortensen
Q&A with Viggo Mortensen
by Neala Johnson
Herald Sun (Australia), March 8 2007



"I don't have a five year plan or a five minute plan. For some people that does work. That's a safer way to do it, it's maybe more remunerative. You can make a fortune and be on the cover of every magazine or whatever, but that's probably a type of prison."

Viggo Mortensen
A Fantastic Leap of Faith
by Brent Simon
Entertainment Today, 2001



'I don't care about being famous. I don't care about having my face on posters. It doesn't massage my ego. It's nice to have a poster, but in the end it's about the movie. Nobody walks around saying "The movie stunk, but the poster was awesome'.'

Viggo Mortensen while promoting Hidalgo
A Reluctant Star
By Barry Koltnow, Orange County Register
7 March 2004



Have you ever asked yourself what you're doing in the world of movies?

Many times, but I always come to the conclusion that I'm in the right profession, one that permits me to share what I have inside and, by chance, allows me to explore other means of artistic expression.

Viggo Mortensen
"I'm permanently dissatisfied."
by Amelia Enríquez, Lecturas Magazine
30 August 2006
Translated for V-W by Margarita



Despite his quirkiness, or maybe because of it, Mortensen, a 50 year old who has stubbornly resisted the formula for modern movie stardom, finds himself one of the last great leading men standing.

A History of Defiance
Daniel Mirth
Men's Journal
October 2009

With Viggo famous for his film acting, taking the risk of returning to the stage after all this time in Purgartorio could have landed him in well, purgatory, if not downright hell. But there have been very good reviews of the play and of Viggo's performance - remarkable for someone who hasn't walked the boards for more than 24 years since his award winning performance in Martin Sherman's Bent in Los Angeles, and the theatre has been packed out. With a quote from 2008, it's also a reminder how long Viggo has been thinking about the play which he has been passionate about seeing presented.



Image Andrés de Gabriel.
© Teatro Español.


"I haven't done theatre in 20 years, and that terrifies me more than death."

Viggo on Purgatorio
Viggo Mortensen: first Good - and then goodbye?
By Kevin Maher
The Times
2 April 2009



"There's no take 2, no escape. You either remember your lines or you don't. It'll be a good challenge."

Viggo in Tokyo for the Alatriste premier talking about taking the stage
Chris Betros
Japantoday.com
5 December 2008



Do you approach a character for the theatre in the same way you would if you were acting in a film?

Yes, always with a certain fear and preparing myself the best I can, paying a lot of attention. I don't think there's so much difference between good acting in film and good acting in theatre. In general, depending on the size of the hall, it's true that in theatre you have to take into account adequate voice projection, but, ultimately, what matters is whether the spectator believes what the actor is doing or not.

Viggo Mortensen: "Sometimes I have thought that I´ve been an idiot to get into this theatrical challenge"
By Liz Perales - translated by Ollie, Rio and Zoe
El Cultural
31 October 2011



'Tough subject, difficult script to memorize and present.'

Viggo Mortensen on Purgatorio
Viggo Mortensen Talks Working With Kristen Stewart in On the Road
by Allie Merriam
Buzz Sugar
29 November 2011



Mr. Mortensen, 52, said that during rehearsals for "Purgatorio" he sometimes thought he "should have picked something easier."

"It's just two characters, and it's an hour and 45 minutes," he said, with no intermission. "Any mistake you make is live, and it can go off the rails," he said. "Also, in the script, there's a lot of repetition and a lot of strange things about time."

Viggo Mortensen interview
By Chris Brock
Watertown Daily Times
20 November 2011



"The most interesting part is that you clearly see how, both in our friends' lives and in the lives of people in the public spotlight, in politics, in legend and myth, mistakes and weaknesses always emerge," says Mortensen, and to illustrate it he brings up a fragment of a poem by Leonard Cohen: "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Viggo and Carme explore forgiveness
By Rosana Torres
El Pais
4 November 2011



"First you need to forgive yourself, then forgive others. Revenge over and over again is a kind of poison, even if saying so is quite justified."

Viggo on the message of Purgatorio
Viggo and Carme explore forgiveness
By Rosana Torres
El Pais
4 November 2011



"You have to be honest about weakness and feelings of guilt. The good thing about any creative work, movie, story or poem, is that it asks you questions without asking you to think one way or another, and this play asks whether it is possible to forgive unconditionally, whether there are things that are so hurtful that they cannot be forgiven, and the answer I personally provide is that real forgiveness cannot set any conditions, be they what they may."

Viggo and Carme explore forgiveness
By Rosana Torres
El Pais
4 November 2011



Sometimes, during rehearsals, I have thought that I've been an idiot to get into this theatrical challenge, but then the doubt, the insecurity go away and I keep enjoying what I´m learning from my colleague Carme Elías, and from our director, Josep María Mestres. Ariel Dorfman´s script is demanding, but it´s full of little gifts that keep coming to you to the extent that you are deciphering the text and physically absorbing it.

Viggo Mortensen: "Sometimes I have thought that I´ve been an idiot to get into this theatrical challenge"
By Liz Perales - translated by Ollie, Rio and Zoe
El Cultural
31 October 2011



Reviews:


The third act, when the cursed lovers meet again, is a beauty. Carme Elías throws herself into the horrifying confession and reaches her emotional height because she captures the duality of this devastated and indomitable woman who wants to begin anew but would return to doing everything she'd done, and Viggo Mortensen is unsurpassable in humanity, contained pain and buried passion.

You and I make four
By Marcos Ordóñez - translated by Ollie, Rio and Zoe
El País
7 November 2011



Viggo Mortensen is a better stage than film actor. And not because that medium is bad, but because the nearness of the spectator and the live performance allow one to appreciate more intensely the entire panoply of gestures and intonations that accompany his acting. From the sober, tough, unpleasant, and relentless interrogator of the first act, he transforms himself into the frightened, eager to please, somewhat conceited and competitive man he is in the second, when the roles change and he turns into the victim of a tyrant, also played to perfection by Carme Elías, who is at times playful and affectionate, other times inflexible and insensitive.

An Interpretive Reading
By María Martín - translated by Ollie and Rio
Diario Abierto
14 November 2011



Here is Elias, one of the great actresses of our stage; I was so close to her this time that, yet again, I was left astounded. The well-known film actor Viggo Mortensen does a magnificent piece of work, which starts from the moment he pretends to be the psychologist. He has a warm voice and a wealth of technique; he takes advantage of his Argentinian speech, especially in this false character, just as he does in the later ones.

Hatred and Forgiveness
By Enrique Centeno - translated by Ollie and Rio
Enrique Centeno Teatro Critica
9 November 2011



The fact is that Mortensen on film is very good; it's his thing. But let's not kid ourselves...the theatre is another world. It's very difficult. I think that I went because I'd already seen almost all the other shows on right now. But the man holds his own quite well. His propensity for raising his hand as if he were going to thrust a sword at someone, Aragorn style, makes me a little nervous, but otherwise, he does an excellent job.

Where I said Viggo (Mortensen), I say Diego (Alatriste)
By Juan Luis Sánchez - translated by Ollie, Rio and Zoe
Decine21.com
25 November 2011



If Viggo Mortensen seems much more convincing, it´s because, to begin with, he manages to surf over the rhetorical encrustations in the text. It cannot be easy to say naturally things like "When they´ve extracted my true face from my most hidden interior." In his actor´s profile - what a novelty - an extreme sensuality, a latent danger and an intense purity coexist. No actor likes to be compared to others, but he makes me think of a cross between the power of the young Kirk Douglas (chin included) and the innocence of Woody Harrelson or John Savage. There´s a great sobriety in his work, although he, too, overuses gestures to express what he feels. For example, the tendency to hunch to show his fragility and the weight he is carrying looks affected and detracts from the power and the mystery.

You and I make four
By Marcos Ordóñez - translated by Ollie, Rio and Zoe
El País
7 November 2011



This mirada oblicua* challenge, undertaken "poetically" at the Matadero del Español, was complicated by the difficulty of the text, a "flowering hell" halfway between a bolerazo** and Sartre, and by the vicissitudes suffered by the play since it was announced that it would open back in 2009, and which kept being postponed by various problems.

The actress who initially was going to star in it, Ariadna Gil, sitting between the author and the film director Agustín Díaz-Yanes, has been a privileged witness to "the tour de force" performance offered by Elías and Mortensen, the New Yorker raised in Buenos Aires, who occasionally failed to find "le mot juste."

The Aragorn of Lord of the Rings and Capitán Alatriste has managed to solve the omissions, we don't know if as a result of bilingualism or his own memory, with such stage presence, especially after the second scene, that it made it impossible to believe that 23 years have already passed since he set foot in a theatre.

Mortensen and Elías open in the Spanish "Purgatorio" to public acclaim
By Concha Barrigós - translated by Ollie, Rio and Zoe
EFE
4 November 2011

With so many new reviews coming out, and a plethora of interviews to read and digest, this week just had to be another round up of A Dangerous Method treats. So I've put together a mixture of thoughts from Viggo, Critics and Cronenberg that shouldn't be missed.



© Hanway/Lago.


A Dangerous Method is very different from A History of Violence or Eastern Promises, the movies you made with Cronenberg before...

You mean, there are no exploding heads?

For example.

On the contrary, there are many of them - only in a symbolic way.

Viggo Mortensen: Love Means Listening
by Kerstin Lindemann
Translation by Athelin
Monsters and Critics (Germany)
4 November 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



'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



'In a lot of ways, it was the biggest stretch I've had as an actor in movies.'

Viggo Mortensen
Viggo Mortensen: 'A Dangerous Method' Taught Me How to Talk in a Movie
By Michael Hogan
Moviefone
23 November 2011



"It was an education, it was an education in terms of acting, using different tools, speaking a lot more, speaking really well written words. Christopher Hampton's script is like a very well laid out well manicured garden with very exotic blooms, in the shadows of which are really disturbing little creatures and secrets (laughs)."

Viggo Mortensen
LFF 2011: A Dangerous Method Press Conference
24 October 2011



'There's only one scene in the movie where I am not smoking a cigar, I think, and that's when Jung comes over for dinner. David and I wrote 20-30 emails just about cigars, finding the kind that was exactly Freud's type.'

Viggo Mortensen
How Viggo Mortensen Got Inside Sigmund Freud's Head
By Rachel Dodes
The Wall Street Journal: Speakeasy
18 November 2011



'He'd send 25 emails of Freud's cigars, you know, with pictures going back and forth: "What kind were they?" "How many did he smoke a day?" "What shape were they?" "What strength?" "Would he have ever varied the kind during the course of the day, or did he always smoke the same kind?" "Could he afford them?" "Were they expensive?" You know, it went on and on and on.'

David Cronenberg Discusses His Dangerous Method
by Luke Goodsell
Rotten Tomatoes
23 November 2011



"He grew up in that atmosphere and also in a very repressive atmosphere generally, not just about sex, but free thinking. There were very strict censorship laws in the 19th century in Vienna and one of the roots of his wit -- that sort of ironic tone that he has in conversation -- is a self-defense mechanism, a way of getting around censorship and anti-Semitism."

Viggo Mortensen didn't shrink from Freud role in 'A Dangerous Method'
By Barbara Vancheri
The Republic
4 November 2011



Words, though, can barely express just how wonderful Mortensen is as Freud, except to say that this is a truly Brando-like performance in its serene amusement and its subtle habitation of a lofty, intractable man. Look especially at the moments when the cash-strapped Freud tries not to be bothered by Jung's financial security. Most actors would be tempted to signal Freud's unrest to get easy laughs, but Mortensen doesn't show the indicated unrest at all. He just allows Freud to feel it behind a stony face and lets us provide the particulars of this joke.

By Dan Callahan
Fandor
6 October 2011



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



Perhaps the most interesting facet of Mortensen's take on Freud is his ability to convey a roiling complexity below a placid surface. His Freud is a man wracked by anxiety over a demanding, and perhaps unwilling, public. He is an outsider, self-conscious of his radical ideas, terrified of moving too far too fast, of pushing too much and being slapped down for his transgressions. His confidence is a mask draped across his insecurity. But this diffidence is as much about his concern that psychoanalysis is too radical for the people as it is about his own ethnic difference.

The Deliberate Method of Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud in 'A Dangerous Method'
By Stuart Henderson
Pop Matters
17 November 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



"I come to like all the characters I play, but I really like him, I think he's funny and engaging."

Viggo Mortensen didn't shrink from Freud role in 'A Dangerous Method'
By Barbara Vancheri
The Republic
4 November 2011



But there is no denying that A Dangerous Method doesn't come alive until we get our asses some Viggo.

Joshua Miller
Chud.com
21 October 2011

Playing twins in Todos Tenemos Un Plan couldn't be more up Viggo's street, as he has become masterly in portraying contradictions and holding them together. As many have repeatedly observed, he is a bit of a contradiction himself, a character actor with the looks of a leading man, and a poet who can convincingly take out the odd Orc between composing lines.



© Haddock Films.


"What I liked immediately and what I continue to like a lot are the contradictions, the dualities that it contains, not only between the two twin brothers that I play, but also the landscapes, the city and the river, and all the characters have certain contradictions."

Viggo Mortensen
Todos Tenemos Un Plan Press Conference
By - transcribed and translated by Rio, Zoe and Ollie
La Metro Television
9 August 2011



"Because the subject of ambivalence is very important and I don't know if there are many actors that can do that," she says. "It was hard for me to think of Argentine actors like that. He has something very soft and very hard at the same time and one doesn't find that so easily."

Ana Piterbarg: Life Change
translated by Zoe
Clarín
8 July 2011



Viggo Mortensen is a study in contradictions: rugged and undeniably virile, and yet thoroughly and irresistibly sensitive.

Interview: Viggo Mortensen
By Todd Gilchrist
Cinematical
26 November 2009



With so many of Hollywood's movie stars seeming like overgrown kids, Viggo Mortensen is the rare American actor who is both muscular and humane, tough and sensitive, fighter and lover. He seduces us with a thread of danger, his chiselled Nordic physique and stunning blue eyes.

36th Telluride Film Festival Program Guide
September 2009



"As a moviegoer I like to be surprised, to be involved and unsure where the story is going, and that certainly happens here. When choosing movies I don't look to play a heroic character, in fact if he is supposedly a terrible person, my first question instinctively is, 'When is he not terrible? And why do you say he's terrible?' I always look for the contradiction in any character, big or small."

Viggo talking about Eastern Promises
From Russia With Loot
By Helen Barlow
Sydney Morning Herald
26 October 2007



No matter what, Mortensen's performance is transfixing, with every contradiction and internal struggle crawling slowly, subtly across his face and furrowed brow. He brings a vulnerability and a danger to the character of Tom Stall that play beautifully against one another.

History of Violence review
Tom Long
Detroit News
24 September 2005



He shimmers with decency as the epitome of American family values at the beginning of the film but, as the film progresses, the violence buried deep within his soul slowly seeps out. His Tom Stall has two completely different identities, both are held under control and he is able to snap between them at will. With skilful underplaying, Mortensen ensures that Stall's violent outbursts are shocking.

Jon Salt
Channel4.com Cannes Diary
17 May 2005



Viggo's got a lot of his plate here, playing a character almost constantly at war with himself, and he nails it.

Anton Sirius
Ain't it Cool News
15 September 2005



He is sporting silky shoulder-length hair (an effeminate touch that is duly balanced by the hyper-masculinity of his granite-like jawline...)

Viggo Mortensen v the apocalypse
By Kevin Maher
The Times
3 October 2009



"He has a great physical ability coupled with a real sensitivity. It's sort of a contradiction between the two, that he can kill so many orcs and ride a horse like he can."

Miranda Otto
It's Good to be "King"
By Susan Wloszczyna
USA Today
16 December 2003



Mortensen is a matinee idol with a philosopher's soul -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau trapped in the body of Rudolph Valentino.

Viggo Mortenson is complicated
By Micjelle Devereaux
San Francisco Bay Guardian
12 September 2007



...a man with the attitude of a surfer, the eyes of a killer, and the brain of a slacker bookworm.

An actor lured by western promise
By Ty Burr
Boston Globe
September 28, 2008

Words - Viggo's head must be full of them at the moment as he interprets Dorfman's compelling and complex play in Madrid. We all know how important words have always been in Viggo's creative life. He runs a publishing company, he writes whenever he can, filling his journals. He collects poems and quotes. Words even appear in his paintings, sometimes coming to the fore, sometimes scrubbed over. Single, strange words often catch his eye and appear in his photos in unusual places. If anyone is in love with words, Viggo is.



© Estudios Picasso / Origen Producciones.


I value words. I am curious about the way words sound, how they draw pictures and provoke unexpected emotional reactions A single disconnected word or phrase can stop you cold, give you a new world to live in.

Introduction to Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004
By Viggo Mortensen
The Best American Nonrequired Reading (ed. Dave Eggers)
2004



"I have written since I was a child. At six or seven, I did my first little stories. I talked about animals, kid things. At about 15, I started with poetry. I always write. In airplanes, in bed, in the bathtub."

Viggo Mortensen
"Writing and acting are like being a kid again"
By Eduardo Bejuk
Gente Magazine - translated by Zooey
September 2009



"I've always liked to write stories and poems," says Mortensen. "I learned watching other people do it and by trial and error, just like acting."

Could Viggo Mortensen Be The Perfect Man?
By Nathan Cooper & Mike Glynn
Star
23 December 2003



Before becoming an actor, he was a published poet, and he still carries a notebook wherever he goes 'just in case a moment presents itself to be stolen.'

The Appealingly Weird World of Viggo Mortensen
By Amy Wallace
Esquire
March 2006



'Words were everywhere I looked, filling dreams, giving me names for everything. It was all I could do to keep up with them, catch a few as they drifted through me, fell now and then from clouds, from my eyes to the table, onto my lap or became tangled in horses' manes. Most of the words got away, as they usually will, but at night I regularly managed to gather them in bunches.'

Viggo Mortensen
Introduction to Best American Non-Required Reading,
Houghton Mifflin, 2004



Did you ever read or write a sentence without a thought for the origin or reason of any of the words from first to last, simply because you felt like doing so? Don't you snatch words impulsively or intuitively from road signs, songs, newspapers, magazines, television shows, Web sites, overheard sotto voce disagreements - from your own decaying, hodgepodge record of all that happens? Individual words and phrases can stand alone and satisfy a reader in even the longest story, regardless of context. When we read willingly, we can get lost in the beauty and rhythm of words before we look for any satisfaction in the significance of their ordering.

Viggo Mortensen
Introduction to Best American Non-Required Reading,
Houghton Mifflin, 2004



"I stay with the words of Federico García Lorca, who said that `Poetry is the union of two words that you never supposed should get together and that form something of a mystery.´ Poetry doesn´t have adepts; it has lovers".

Viggo Goes Poetic
By Natalia Torres - translated by Ollie, Rio and Zoe
Día a Día
3 December 2010



'I'm always looking at things that I write and going 'what can I take out of that and [make] it still work'. And then, years later... I might look at that poem again and go, 'You know, I can still take out two words.'

Viggo Mortensen
The Fire That Fuels an Artist's Heart
by Carnell
Carpe Noctem magazine #15, 1999



'His words are simple and vast...'

Best books: Recent Forgeries ... chosen by Neil LaBute
The Week
3 April 2009



...a real travel notebook; an illustrated journal that tries to perpetuate life and experience, emotion and memory intact, in order to leave no gap to the inevitable final touches that the memory makes use of. His words are emotive, and the image strengthens even more that desperate attempt to retain what he has experienced.

Review of Linger
Linger: The Traveller's Journal
By María Dolores García - translated by Paddy
Diario de León
27 August 2006



How much of your life is in your stories and poems?

Like all writers, I write many different things, but you always create using your own life, even if everything is imaginary on the page. As much as you invent a totally distinct world, there's always something of yourself, even if you don't realize it.

Viggo Mortensen - All of Us are Mestizos
by Carlos Shilling - translated by Ollie, Remolina, Rio and Zoe
LaVoz
November 2010



'A lot of people that were here tonight said something about their writing, but were too embarrassed by it. And I'd ask them about what they write and encourage them to pursue it. People sometimes seem to feel that poetry is just this little thing you do privately, like your diary. But in reality it's something that you can work at in many ways, that you can share, that you can take as far as you like.'

Viggo Mortensen at the Midnight Special reading
A Religious Moment Where Something Might Happen
Scott Thill
Morphizm 2002



"Patches of recorded feeling vanished, irretrievable. There is no point in trying to remember and rebuild the word houses, word hills, word dams, or word skeletons like some sort of archeology project. There may be pieces I recall or inadvertently retell, but every word will be new, will go somewhere, will die no matter what I might do to tame or hold it."

Viggo Mortensen on his lost writings
Introduction to Best American Non-Required Reading
Houghton Mifflin, 2004

This is yet another week where I've tried to present a miscellaneous group of favourite quotes and ended up finding a theme running through them. Miguel Ángel Nepomuceno's comment that Viggo has his 'own light' sums them up. Always the individual, Viggo has never stopped living his life in his own - often quirky - way, and this ability to always be himself applies to his career as much as to his moments alone.


">www.viggo-works.com/webpageimages/011ars.jpg">
Argentina November 2005.
© GOFF INF.


He doesn't need to wield a sword to be recognized. For those who can see beyond that, his personality stands out from the rest with no need of spotlights. He has his own light.

Reunion with Alatriste in Uclés
Diario de León
by Miguel Ángel Nepomuceno - translated by Paddy
26 June 2005



"He's an unusual and very special guy, and I admire him because he will never adjust to other people's ideas of how he should be.'

Elijah Wood
Viggo: "I'm shy with women"
By - translated by Suzy
Vecko-Revyn #3
30 January 2003



...he went to see the game his team played against Tigre in Victoria Stadium. The management had reserved a box for him, but Mortensen preferred sitting in the stands among the fans.

Viggo Mortensen - Lights, Camera... Passion
By Eduardo Bejuk - translated by Ollie, Rio and Zoe
Gente
10 May 2011



He... presents me with two large chocolate squares, one wrapped in pink paper that has a handwritten "Venezuela" on it, and another in orange paper that has a handwritten "Indonesia".

I am not sure whether he handwrapped them himself or whether they came from a hand-wrapped chocolate shop. I imagine him travelling the world with a suitcase of wrapped chocolates.

Sympathy for the devil
By Chrissy Iley
The Observer
19 April 2009



"He wanted to eat a real locust," Johnston says. "The locust he eats is made out of sugar. He said, 'You know, I can eat a live one.' I said, 'Let's eat all the fake ones first. If we run out, you can eat a live one.' "

Joe Johnston on filming Hidalgo
A Man of Many Parts
Teresa Wiltz
Washington Post, 2004



'Writing or acting or playing music, I need to feel like I'm connecting with something. And although acting brings me many moments like that I'm probably most relaxed sitting down at a piano. I don't read music and I've never had lessons but it's fun and I find it very relaxing. I'm okay with mistakes and people not liking what I play. I just do it.'

Viggo Mortensen on Good
By Angus Fontaine
Time Out, Sydney
9 April 2009



"People who are creators create," he says. "People say to me all the time, 'Why don't you just focus on one thing?' And I say, 'Why? Why just one thing? Why can't I do more? Who makes up these rules?"

Viggo Mortensen
Finding Viggo
By Alex Kuczynski
Vanity Fair magazine
January 2004



'This is only me and my camera. I sit down and watch the sky, stop, and maybe sing a little or write something down. When I have time to do that, I am as happy as I can be.'

Viggo Mortensen
Capable Of Many Things
By Hanna Björk Valsdóttir - translated by Ragga
30 May 2008
Source: Fréttablaðið



Viggo Mortensen's temporary headquarters during the Toronto Film Festival were bare except for one corner, where there was a sculpture assembled from a plastic grocery-store bag draped over a tripod.....While Mortensen used the restroom, I tried to decide if the bag-on-tripod sculpture was a comment on our throwaway culture or a meditation on the relationship between art and reality. Turns out it was his luggage.

"Want to see my luggage?" Mortensen asked, emerging from his hand-washing and following my gaze to the "sculpture." "Let's see what's in here," he added, removing underwear, several T-shirts - one with fishing records on it, another emblazoned with "Bring Our Troops Home" - and a United Nations flag from the bag. "I travel light."

Renaissance man jousts with career-changing role
By Chris Hewitt,
Twin Cities
28 September 2005



Barefoot and clad in a pair of sweats that have seen better days, Viggo Mortensen walks over to introduce himself. His hands and arms are covered with names and phone numbers he has scribbled on himself after checking his answering machine. And his hair is tousled and flecked with tiny bits of paint. None of this can hide Mortensen's deadly good looks.

Viggo Artist & Actor
By Jae-Ha Kim
Cleveland Plain Dealer
Los Angeles, CA 1 April 1999



PA: If you were a flower, viggo, what kind would you be?

VM: Today, I'd be one of those spiky little red bottlebrush trees.

Interview with Patricia Arquette
Interview magazine, 1995



"Every tree is something special, just like people are. All different, but...
I look at them as I look at people. I get along well with most trees. I don't get into arguments with them, and if I do it's probably my own fault. If I don't watch where I'm going when I'm in the forest, it comes back and smacks me in the nose, and I only have myself to blame."

RUV Interview
Skovbo Exhibition, Iceland
Translated by Mums
30 May 2008



At the end of a day of filming in the desert, the crew would pack up for the two-hour drive back to the hotel. Mortensen, however, would stay behind and sleep in the sand dunes, the rare Hollywood actor who is happiest when alone with a book, his thoughts and the stars in the sky.

Hot Actor - Viggo Mortensen
By G. E.
September 2003
Source: Rolling Stone (U.S.)