Unreel Interview with Viggo Mortensen

Exclusive Interview with Lord of the Rings star VIGGO MORTENSEN!

QUESTION: ARE YOU VAIN AT ALL ABOUT YOURSELF? AT HOME, WHEN YOU LOOK IN THE MIRROR, ARE THERE ANY THINGS THAT YOU WOULD CHANGE?

MORTENSEN: Everybody is vain, everybody is...unless they're hammered or something, they're trying to put their best foot forward. Sure, everybody is vain, everybody has...it depends. For some people it gets out of hand, and it becomes their life. They become preoccupied with how they look, or how they're aging, or how other people perceive them. It's like anything else.

QUESTION: WHAT DRIVES YOU A LITTLE NUTS WHEN YOU LOOK IN THE MIRROR?

MORTENSEN: I don't know. Depends on the day.

QUESTION: MICHELLE PFEIFFER RECENTLY TOLD ME SHE CAN'T STAND HER LIPS..

MORTENSEN: Really? What about her lips doesn't she like?

QUESTION: SHE SAID HER LIPS WERE LIKE DUCK LIPS!

MORTENSEN: Duck lips huh? I don't know about that.

QUESTION: DO YOU OBSESS ABOUT THINGS LIKE YOUR HAIR OR WHATEVER?

MORTENSEN: [Laughter.] Uh, do I obsess about my what? Haha. Everybody obsesses about their hair, no? That is if they still have their hair. [Laughs.]

QUESTION: ARE YOU SURPRISED THAT YOUR CAREER HAS TAKEN YOU IN THIS DIRECTION? PEOPLE THINK OF YOU AS...

MORTENSEN: Naked? Just naked in every movie. Naked, naked, naked.

QUESTION: [LAUGHS.] I JUST REMEMBERED, YOU WERE ALSO NAKED IN 'G.I. JANE,' WITH DEMI MOORE AND IN 'A WALK ON THE MOON,' WITH DIANE LANE.

MORTENSEN: No, in 'G.I. Jane,' I was fat. I had the shorts though. That's the next best thing.

QUESTION: SUDDENLY AT AGE 46, YOU'RE A SEX SYMBOL.

MORTENSEN: You think so, huh? I guess with the 'Lord of the Rings' films, it's accented that part of my image. But sex symbol? If you say so.

QUESTION: OH YEAH. FOR SURE! AND THE LAST INSTALLMENT OF THE 'LORD OF THE RINGS' WILL DO IT EVEN MORE BECAUSE YOU'RE ON SCREEN ALMOST THE ENTIRE TIME.

MORTENSEN: Well, you know what, I've been told since I started being in movies, or testing for leads in movies, which I never got one, by testing. 'You have arrived.' I've heard 'You're there man, you've arrived, you're so long.' And I consider myself lucky to have been working steadily for years, and making a living off of this. But I've arrived so many times that I don't even know where I went. In the meantime, what happened? So, I don't know. I take it with a grain of salt, certainly.

QUESTION: WAS IT HARD FOR YOU THE FIRST TIME WHEN PEOPLE SAID, 'HERE YOU GO -- YOU'VE ARRIVED! THIS FILM IS GOING TO DO AMAZING THINGS FOR YOU!' THAT WAS 15 YEARS AGO, RIGHT? AND THEN IT DIDN'T HAPPEN.

MORTENSEN: Well, when I first started, the first movies where I had a speaking part...and some of them were with good directors, like Woody Allen, Jonathan Demme, and they were nice little scenes. And for whatever reasons...you know, you shoot a lot of stuff, especially Woody Allen doesn't use a lot of what he shoots, whatever...those movies, you know, I was not in the movie, but I didn't know that. It wasn't like someone was going to officially notify me. So I told my family, Friday it opens, come see. And they go and they look and they say, 'What are we doing here? He's not in that movie, he's not in the credits.' And I said, 'Holy shit.' So that's disappointing, and likewise the first couple...I mean, one of the first auditions I ever had was first 'Greystoke', for example, right? And it came down to, pretty much, between me and Christopher. But I had several, I'd probably done that 20 odd times, tested for a lead in a movie. And at that time, when I first started out, I would get to that point a lot. And I didn't really have hardly any experience at all. I wasn't a very good actor, you know, as far as I'm concerned. And I was doing my best, and I felt that because I'd reached the final stage of this process, you fly to London and get a screen test and all that, because I'd done my best and felt good about it, I felt, 'Well, I'll probably get this part.' Also, partly because people who...whether it's your agents or your friends...are like, 'Man, you're set! You're going to work all the time!' Which is the thing I was interested in, just getting to know something about it, and getting jobs. And I got the wrong idea, certainly, that it would be a lot easier than it would turn out to be, than it has turned out to be.

QUESTION: DID YOU EVER THINK ABOUT QUITTING THE BUSINESS?

MORTENSEN: If you really want to know -- yesI did. All the time. All the time. Even as recently as ten thirty this morning. [Laughs.] No, it's a frustrating thing. You do have to make a lot of compromises. You are kind of buffered in a little bit. You don't really...as opposed to, say, painting or writing or other art forms, you provide...there's this term I can't get out of my head, that I heard. It's an official government term for tax reasons. A bit called 'artists are content providers.' Have you heard that term? You're not an artist or a painter or a movie director, you're a content provider. And actors aren't even that. I mean, they are partial content. You know? And the content provider is probably the director. But a painter or a sculptor or whatever, they are doing the thing. For better or for worse, it's their work which you're looking at or taking in. So it is frustrating, and a lot of compromises are made. Not just by people editing, and, like, aw, look what they did, but you yourself. Compromise yourself in trying to get work.

QUESTION: DO YOU FIND WITH THE 'LORD OF THE RINGS' TRILOGY THAT'S ALL CHANGED NOW? ARE YOU AT A HIGHER LEVEL NOW?

MORTENSEN: In what sense?

QUESTION: HIGHER LEVEL IN THE TYPES OF SCRIPTS YOU'RE BEING OFFERED. DO YOU STILL CALL THEM OR ARE THEY CALLING YOU NOW?

MORTENSEN: There's a, you know, if Martin Scorcese wanted me to be in his movie, I'm sure I'd have to audition for him several times to get the part. Or, say, Jane Campion, I had to run through a lot of auditions, I had to work hard to get that part in 'Portrait of a Lady.' I had to audition for 'Lord of the Rings' when Stuart Townsend dropped out. It depends on the director, you know. But, yes, I have gotten parts in films because these people were interested in me and felt that I would be right for it. I didn't have to read. And that is different, and yes, I can get into rooms where I couldn't get into before, or if, if I had gotten in, they wouldn't have known who the hell I was at all, or my work. So yeah, that's a little easier, but it's still not a guarantee that you'll get the job, that you'll do a good job.

QUESTION: ARE YOU TAKING MORE CONTROL TO SHAPE THE DIRECTION OF YOUR CAREER? WHERE BEFORE YOU WERE JUST HAPPY TO GET THE JOB?

MORTENSEN: I think you want to work, and you want to get more work. The only power an actor really has that I know of that is important is the ability to say no. You know? 'Thank you very much, but I'd rather not do that job. Even though you're nice enough to offer it to me.' But as far as saying, 'Yes, I want to do this,' I don't think you have as much, no matter who you are, control over that.

QUESTION: ACTORS ARE SO CUED IN TO SCHEDULES. VERY STRUCTURED. YOU ARE DIFFERENT. I BET YOU USED TO BE MORE OF A BOHEMIAN. DID YOU EVER HAVE THOSE YEARS WHEN YOU WERE MUCH YOUNGER WHERE YOU WERE THIS FREE SPIRIT DOING WHAT YOU WANTED WHEN YOU WANTED?

MORTENSEN: Yes, you're right. I can be a bit of a hippie. I still kind of do what I want. I'm on my own time, you know. If somebody hires me for a movie...

QUESTION: WERE YOU AFFECTED BY THIS EXPERIENCE IN YOUR LIFE?

MORTENSEN: That summer of '69, my parents had just split up that summer. My two brothers and I lived in Argentina at that time.

QUESTION: SO YOU DIDN'T MAKE IT TO WOODSTOCK?

MORTENSEN: Yeah. It would have been a long, long trip. Especially if you're hitchhiking. No, but although I had been born in Manhattan, I had been raised away from both New York and the United States.

QUESTION: WHERE WERE YOU RAISED?

MORTENSEN: In Argentina, and then later on I lived in Denmark where my dad grew up. But he got work down there so the family moved. When they split up, my mom took my brothers and I back to northern New York, where she was from. So I arrived, I mean, that summer of '69, with the moon landing and Manson killings and Woodstock and so many other things, was when I was getting a crash course as a kid in American slang, American this, that, the counter-culture. Whatever impressions I was getting, you know...I remember having a copy of Sleazy Rider in MAD magazine, the parody of 'Easy Rider.' And all this stuff. You know, things that you couldn't see, things that you could see, just American culture. I was like, 'Woah,' getting these blasts. I had been gone from it. So I remember that summer very well.

QUESTION: WERE YOU IN ARGENTINA OR NEW YORK?

MORTENSEN: In '69, that summer, we moved to New York state.

QUESTION: SO YOU WERE IN NYC WHEN WOODSTOCK HAPPENED?

MORTENSEN: I was in northern New York.

QUESTION: DID YOU WANT TO GO?

MORTENSEN: I knew that other, older kids were going and stuff. But I didn't really...I mean, it wasn't an option.

QUESTION: WHAT DID YOUR DAD DO THAT YOU MOVED AROUND SO MUCH AS A KID?

MORTENSEN: He's just a restless person. He just did lots of jobs, got hired by different companies to do different things. He had a farm down there for a while. His background is, he's Danish, and he was a farm kid, really. He left home as a teenager, kind of a self-made person. He's done all kinds of jobs, traveled a lot. I mean, probably, I'm grateful I guess to the fact that he is such a restless person, because otherwise I wouldn't have had all those early experiences.

QUESTION: SO YOU'VE SEEN A LOT OF THE WORLD?

MORTENSEN: Yeah. I was very lucky that way. Maybe that helps me with the acting.

QUESTION: ARE YOU SINGLE RIGHT NOW?

MORTENSEN: Yeah.

QUESTION: DIVORCED?

MORTENSEN: Yeah.

QUESTION: DO YOU ANY OTHER KIDS BESIDES A SON?

MORTENSEN: I have just a son.

QUESTION: ARE YOU CLOSE? ARE THEY ALL IN LOS ANGELES RIGHT NOW?

MORTENSEN: Yeah, we're tight. I mean, I'm really good friends with his mom. We do things, the three of us together. It's as good as it could be, I think, short of being together all the time.

QUESTION: ARE YOU AS RESTLESS AS YOUR DAD WAS?

MORTENSEN: I love to travel. And try different things. Just in the confines of my own house, I'll jump from record to record, book to book, painting to photos to this, step outside, take a picture of the land, paint, whatever. Put on a video. I like to...or just sit there and think. I don't know. I like to travel, inside and outside, and probably all over the world.

QUESTION: YOU HAVE TWO BROTHERS. WHAT DO THEY DO?

MORTENSEN: They're geologists.

QUESTION: BOTH OF THEM?

MORTENSEN: Yeah.

QUESTION: THAT'S A FUNKY TATTOO YOU'VE GOT. CAN YOU DESCRIBE IT?

MORTENSEN: Combination of a fist and a barbed wire fence. I was drunk on Halloween and so were the people I was with, and it was just dark and confusing. I don't know. Just the mistakes of youth.

QUESTION: YOU MUST'VE BEEN IN YOUR TEENS WHEN YOU GOT THAT.

MORTENSEN: Seventeen.

QUESTION: WHAT HAPPENED WHEN YOU WOKE UP AND SAW WHAT YOU HAD DONE TO YOURSELF?

MORTENSEN: We went to a clinic, and a doctor who was, he must have been 80 at least...we got him out of bed, it was like two, three in the morning, and he came over. He took one look at me and he just started sewing because he realized that I wouldn't feel a thing. Which I didn't. And my friends who were waiting outside in the waiting room had ordered pizza. And I remember that afterwards, my whole head was like that, and they were just feeling me these little bite-sized bites of pizza. That's how I remember that night.

QUESTION: WHEN YOU FIRST STARTED, I HEAR THE MOVIE STUDIOS TRIED TO CHANGE YOUR FIRST NAME?

MORTENSEN: Yeah.

QUESTION: WHAT DID THEY WANT YOU TO CHANGE IT TO?

MORTENSEN: My middle name is Peter, so they tried to say Peter Morton. I didn't really want to. I jokingly said, 'Well why don't you make it Dick Morton? That would be good.' They said, 'Hmm...' I said, 'No.' Yeah, they always do that kind of thing. Change your name, fix your face, fix your teeth. Film you from the other side.

QUESTION: IS IT A FAMILY NAME, VIGGO?

MORTENSEN: Yeah, it's my dad's name.

QUESTION: WHICH WAS THE WOODY ALLEN MOVIE YOU WERE CUT OUT OF?

MORTENSEN: 'Purple Rose of Cairo.'

QUESTION: OH, YOU AND MICHAEL KEATON. HE GOT FIRED.

MORTENSEN: Did he? That was actually pretty funny. I showed up at this mansion on Long Island, and it was a scene, a party scene...

QUESTION: WOULD EVER WANT TO DIRECT?

MORTENSEN: Maybe sometime. To let actors do their thing, and realize what a bastard I can be. It would have to be something I feel personally strong about.