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His legions of
fans swooned during his love scenes in A Walk on the Moon
and clung to his every word in films such as A Perfect Murder
and 28 Days. Now, with Viggo Mortensen's starring role in
The Lord of the Rings : The Two Towers, it's time for
everyone else to take notice.
Poor Viggo. It sucks to lose your wallet, but to do it the day
before you and your 13-year-old son are going to fly from
Spokane, Washington to your home in Los Angeles is really bad.
And to do it while you're with a journalist who's profiling you,
looking for the symbolic nature of your every gesture, is beyond
the pale. Is Viggo Mortensen bucking at responsibility ? Is he
rejecting his recent pecuniary stability thanks to his starring
role in the Lord of the Rings trilogy ? Or is he just out of
sorts with his new, much-vaunted place in the world ? What does
it tell you ?
"It tells me that maybe I should quit my fucking job,"
Mortensen grumbles as he empties his bag for the third time,
thrusting his arms into the side pockets, hoping the missing
item will mercifully appear. He rifles through the piles of
Native American books and costumes in his trailer, on the set of
Hidalgo, here in the northwestern plains of Montana. The
movie, a big-budget Disney epic to be released this summer,
centres on Mortensen's Frank Hopkins, a 19th-century Pony
Express messenger. Hopkins, who is half-Lakota, races his
mustang, Hidalgo, against the Arabic steed of a Middle Eastern
sheikh in a quixotic search for redemption. After more than 15
mostly obscure years in the business, the 44-year-old actor has
his first solo lead in a major Hollywood movie.
"Maybe I should just do this one and be done with it,"
Mortensen says with frazzled exhaustion. And he's not bluffing.
After all, he does have another life (or two, or three) :
Mortensen has published five books of his paintings, photography
and poetry, and has had five gallery exhibits in Los Angeles and
New York City. He has also released several CDs of experimental
music.
"Certain people don't have a lazy bone in their body,"
says his good friend, producer Don Phillips. "Viggo is
that kind of person who has to be continually on the move. He
may sometimes bitch and moan about it, but he loves being busy."
Currently running on a perilous diet of about five hours of
sleep, he's juggling the journalist; the dropping off of his
truck at his brother's place 300 miles away in Idaho; his son;
and his starring in Hidalgo, for which he has to fly to
Morocco in three days to continue production.
"I'm just like everyone else here - discombobulated,"
he says to a concerned crew member who offers him gas money for
the drive home. Mortensen has pretty much resigned himself to
the probability that the wallet was mistakenly thrown out by an
overeager production assistant cleaning up his trailer. Of
course, it could have been stolen, but he prefers not to think
that way. Without ID, he won't be able to fly, so he'll have to
drive the 1,300 miles or so to L.A. in order to make it back in
time to "get all this shit done" (including the photo
shoot for this magazine) before he flies to northern Africa.
But despite the low-grade grumbling, Mortensen doesn't seem
angry. Or entirely surprised. With a self-deprecating shake of
his head, he packs the last of the bags in his Dodge truck.
"Oh, man, I'm fried. Refried. And fried again,"
he says, with a tired smile. "But I'm already thinking
this'll make a pretty funny part of your interview."
This is our Aragorn, Isildur's heir, Lord of the Dunedain, son
of Arathorn, the last of the Numenoreans. The one who would be
king. Also known as Strider, he is a ranger, a skilled
swordsman, and a world traveller. In director Peter Jackson's
adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's classic The Lord of the Rings,
Aragorn is the valiant human who helps lead the nine-member
fellowship - a motley crew of hobbits (Elijah Wood, Sean Astin,
Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd), the wizard Gandalf (Ian
McKellen), an elf named Legolas (Orlando Bloom), the dwarf Gimli
(John Rhys-Davies), and another human, Boromir (Sean Bean) - in
its quest to destroy the Ring, a source of evil that, in the
hands of the dark lord Sauron, would unleash a reign of terror
that would befall all of Middle-earth.
The Rings trilogy opened last Christmas with The Fellowship
of the Ring, introducing Tolkien's tale to those few who had
not read the book and launching the fellowship on its way toward
Sauron's lair in Mordor. The film ended with Boromir betraying
the fellowship and being killed by the evil wizard Saruman's orc
henchman, and with the fellowship in disarray. Considering
Jackson's faithfulness to Tolkien's text so far, this December's
The Two Towers will no doubt follow the fellowship as it
splinters into three groups, each of which faces various
obstacles along the way toward Sauron's Dark Tower of Barad-Dur
and Saruman's Tower of Orthanc in Isengard. We'll have to wait
until next December's The Return of the King for the
odyssey to culminate, and the king - that is, Aragorn - to
ascend his throne.
The Fellowship pulled in 13 Oscar nominations and more
than $860 million at the box office. With the two other films on
the way (all three were shot in one unprecedented span over 15
months in 1999-2000) and potentially billions in total profits,
the Lord of the Rings juggernaut, and all those connected to it,
will be riding The Fellowship's elfin coattails deep into the
year 2004.
Mortensen's sudden Hollywood heat, especially as a hunk for the
post-adolescent set, is one of Rings' many success stories
(which include New Line's brilliant business gamble, Jackson's
joining the A-list of directors and various special-effects
landmarks). Which is not to say that he wasn't an accomplished
actor before. Over the years, Mortensen has quietly created an
impressive body of work; as a loose cannon in Sean Penn's
directorial debut, The Indian Runner; as a sadistic drill
sergeant opposite Demi Moore in G.I. Jane; and as the
forbidden fruit to both Gwynneth Paltrow and Diane Lane in,
respectively, A Perfect Murder and A Walk on the Moon.
"Sure, we thought he was going to make it after The
Indian Runner," Phillips says. "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. We thought he was going to make it after G.I. Jane.
We thought he was going to make it after this, that, whatever.
And now he's in the biggest movie of, well, maybe of all
time."
But "biggest" movie and Hollywood "hunk" are
conventional notions of achievement that Mortensen couldn't care
less about. "For Viggo, I think it's the experience of
doing the work and achieving his high standards that are his
measure of success," Diane Lane says. "It's
nice being able to morph and disappear and morph again and
reappear. He's like Hollywood's secret weapon. The only problem
for Viggo might be that it's not a secret any more."
The truth is, it wasn't supposed to be this way. In the summer
of 1999, while Mortensen and his son, Henry, were taking a
15,000-mile road trip, visiting relatives and friends across the
United States, the Irish actor Stuart Townsend was preparing for
his role as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. But,
already, weeks into preproduction in New Zealand, Peter Jackson
was realising that the 26-year-old Townsend just wasn't the
right man for the job.
"Every time I talked to Peter about it, he would say
'Well, I want him a little bit older,'" says Rings
makeup artist Jose Perez, who tried adding more and more grey to
Townsend's beard, but to no avail. "We were forcing it.
And Stuart and I knew very well that what they wanted was an
older man."
On the morning of the third day of shooting, it was announced
that Townsend would be leaving the production. "A couple
of us were crying," Elijah Wood recalls. "If
you can imagine, you spend two months with someone that you
assume you'll be spending the next year and a half with. We had
formed a tight bond with this guy. Whether it was right or
wrong, it was traumatising."
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, Mortensen was painting and focusing
on Henry's getting back to school when he got a call from his
agent. She was offering him the role of Aragorn - the caveat
being that he'd have to fly to New Zealand the next day. Not
having read The Lord of the Rings, Mortensen turned to
his son. "Henry asked, 'What character ?' And I had
to look at what I had written down and I said, 'Strider ?'"
Mortensen recalls. " And he goes, 'That's great. He's
cool.'"
Aragorn's first scene was going to be shot within a week, but
Jackson was not confident that he was going to get his man.
"We were told it was highly unlikely as Viggo had a
reputation for taking a 'long time' to commit," says
Jackson, who recalls shooting the scene in which the hobbits are
talking to the Bree barkeeper and are just moments away from
seeing Aragorn sitting in the corner. "And we had no
Aragorn," he says. But in the middle of shooting,
Jackson was rushed off the set to field a call from Mortensen.
"He asked me a series of very intense questions about
Aragorn's character. I stumbled my way through the answers,"
Jackson says. "As the questioning continued, I started
to realise he wasn't going to do it. He was sombre, very
serious, rather dour. Then, without warning, Viggo suddenly
said, 'Well, I guess I'll see you in a couple of days !'"
Mortensen said he made the leap on the strength of his son's
enthusiasm and the belief that "I would regret not doing
it." Within 24 hours he was on a plane, thumbing
through a copy of the trilogy. It didn't take long to see that
the book "was so densely packed with allusions to so
many archetypes and mythological elements," says
Mortensen, who has long held a passionate interest in the power
of myth. "Whether it's out of a 12th-century French
poem, something Native American, or certain Muslim tales, it
doesn't matter. There are certain things, like the hero's
journey, that all those stories have in common."
And as he continued to read, he developed a deeper affinity for
Aragorn. "I found that he, too, had misgivings and was
hiding something," Mortensen says. "You use
what you can as an actor. And the fact that he was someone
seemingly as brave and self-sacrificing as he was, but, at
times, also so plagued by doubt and insecurity about what others
- and he himself - might expect of him, I thought, 'Well, yeah,
I can relate to that.'"
Driving West on Montana's two-lane Route 2, Mortensen smokes an
occasional American Spirit cigarette while his son sits quietly
in the backseat, staring ahead. A silver Middle Eastern evil-eye
talisman that the two made dangles from the rear-view mirror,
along with a feather and a couple of Sioux medicine wheels.
Mortensen futzes with them, trying to get them to hang a certain
way, until Henry asks him to stop.
Q : I heard stories about your fishing trips into the
backwoods of New Zealand.
VM : Henry, should I not tell him about the rabbit ?
HM : It's really gross.
VM : Rabbits sometimes run out in front of your car,
right ? Well, I hit this rabbit on this lonely road in the South
Island and I wanted to make sure it was dead. If it wasn't, I'd
put it out of its misery. And it was quite dead, so I thought,
'Well, why waste it ?' And so I made a little fire and ate it.
Q : Is this something that you thought Aragorn would
have done ?
VM : As he was driving down the road and if he hit a
rabbit? Yeah, he might. If he was hungry, I guess.
Q : So, I guess not really... It was more just a Viggo
thing.
VM : I wasn't thinking, 'Oh, this is good. I can use
this in the movie.'
Q : Sounds kind of Native American.
VM : It was fresh. That, I knew.
Mortensen's intense dedication to embodying Aragorn - as well as
those wildlife adventures off the set - quickly became legendary
among the Rings cast and crew. He would sleep in shacks by the
water and camp in the forest while his co-stars slept in more
refined quarters. He carried his sword everywhere - whether it
was in his car or into restaurants. "He is the most
committed, most devoted, the most... He transforms his entire
life into the character," says Sean Astin. "I've
never seen an actor go there the way this guy does."
And he made the leap quickly. With just four days to practice
sword fighting and horse riding, endure costume fittings, and
learn his lines, Mortensen suddenly found himself shooting the
challenging Fellowship battle scene on Weathertop, in
which Aragorn battles the evil Ringwraiths, who are intent upon
stealing the Ring.
"I'm still shocked that that was the first thing he did,"
says Wood, who had an early dinner with Mortensen during which
he found him hard to talk with. "But when he started
working, there was no question. This was Aragorn, this was the
man who was meant to play this role. We had an immense amount of
respect for him being able to jump in so quickly."
Mortensen's facility with the sword became immediately apparent.
"The people who were teaching him said that he was
insanely talented," says Miranda Otto, who plays the
Lady Eowyn, who falls for Aragorn. "There's one scene [at
the end of] the first film where a knife is thrown at
Aragorn, who clocks it with his sword. One of the stunt guys who
was meant to be his double said, 'I've been practicing that and
I've never been able to [hit the knife] once, and Viggo
hits it on the first take. I hate him,'"
Mortensen's humble attitude and willingness to do his own stunts
earned him the nickname "No-Ego Viggo" among the crew.
"He was always taking out stuntmen and buying them beer
because he hit them one too many times," says Orlando
Bloom. "He just goes for it. Viggo's energy is endless.
He knows no limit."
Perhaps the most gruelling stretch in the production was the
three-month shoot of the siege of Helm's Deep, a fortified
retreat wedged next to a mountain that features prominently in The
Two Towers. In the sequence, Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas join
the people of Rohan in fighting off the marauding forces of
Saruman. The months of night shooting, without break, eventually
took their toll on Mortensen.
"He had no knuckles," laughs make-up man Perez.
"He'd been virtually slaughtered by everyone because he
would not let anyone do his rehearsals. All his knuckles were
completely bruised and cut and God knows what else. Every time
that he had a scene, I said, 'Okay, now where did they hit you
?'"
In one take, Mortensen was battling an Uruk-Hai, a powerful and
ferocious strain of orc, when a blade that was jutting from an
extra's armour slashed into his face. "I thought, Oh my
God, he's lost his face," recalls Perez, who then saw
that the blade had somehow missed Mortensen's flesh but split
his tooth - literally in half. "I said, 'You list half a
tooth.' And he looked at me and said, 'Look for it. You can
stick it on with superglue.' And I said, 'No, come on, don't be
silly, you can't.'" Mortensen finally relented and went
to a dentist's office, still in full battle armour.
But Mortensen's commitment extended beyond matters of the flesh.
"He brought to Aragorn this huge internal life that you
don't see as much in the book," says Otto. "He
became more and more Aragorn, and less and less Viggo."
Mortensen's desire to make Aragorn more than a "cardboard
cut-out" hero can be heard in his nuanced explanation of
his character's orphan mentality or the pitfalls of his heritage
as a Numenorean (a unique breed of human). Mortensen says that
he wishes Fellowship "would have been longer,"
and that he especially misses several cut scenes in which
Aragorn's relationship with the elves is further illuminated.
(He's happy that there's a special expanded edition of The
Fellowship on DVD, a version that adds another 30 minutes to the
178-minute movie.)
Mortensen's dedication found its way regularly to Jackson's fax
machine. "Viggo commits himself to a project with the
same intensity as the filmmakers - which is rare for an actor,"
the director says. "After the end of a long day's
shooting, when all the other cast would be either in bed or in
the bar, [partner and co-screenwriter Fran Walsh] and I
would be home grappling with the script for the next week's
shooting. At midnight, a nine-page handwritten memo would come
rattling through the fax from Viggo, outlining his thoughts
about that day's work and the next few days to come. He would
suggest passages from the book we should look at. This wasn't an
exception - over 15 months it became the rule. In the small
hours, it was actually comforting to know there was somebody
else out there grappling with the same nightmare that we were."
Mortensen's strong identification with Aragorn even puts him at
odds with his director on at least one point. The actor
circuitously tells of hearing an interview about The Lord of
the Rings. "They were talking about how the
audience's point of view was with the hobbits because they were
the most human. And then the [interviewer] asked, 'Well,
what about Boromir or Aragorn?' They said, 'Well, those guys are
just these fighting machines - noble warrior types, and they're
idealised,'" Mortensen says. "And I thought,
'Totally wrong. Not the way Sean Bean did it. Not the way I did
it. And not the way Tolkien wrote it.'" Mortensen
eventually admits that it was Jackson who made the statement.
"I was surprised," he says. And then, hopefully
: "It may have been taken out of context."
The sparsely travelled road is lined with fir and spruce trees
as it winds its way through Montana's Kootenai National Forest.
Mortensen looks out for mule deer and occasionally makes sure
that Henry is comfortable in the back. Sometimes Mortensen talks
so softly he's almost inaudible. His frequent pauses aren't an
opportunity for response, but a mental breather before he
mumbles on. When he is done with a thought, he seems relieved
that his turn to speak has passed. Despite being dead tired,
when he sees a lake that is sprinkled with dozens of ripples
from feeding fish, Mortensen is eager to stop and throw a line
in, but it's getting dark. He glances down at the tape recorder
between us and releases an exaggerated groan of self-pity.
VM : Henry, I keep asking Tom what's the interview
about, and he says he doesn't know.
Q : Come on, it's about you and The Lord of the Rings
VM : Henry, can you help me ? Let's just take care of
the bastard. All Tom wants to talk about is Oscars and magazine
covers and...what else does he...
Q : Fame. Fame.
VM : Yeah. Oh, that. Oh, that.
Q : Why not talk about your attitude toward Hollywood
?
VM : Henry, he comes all the way out here, and he
wants to talk about those things. My goodness. All I can say is,
my goodness.
Mortensen spent some of his earlier years out here, in Idaho,
but that was just one of many stops along the way. His
Danish-born father, Viggo Sr., who worked a variety of jobs
("on farms and in small businesses," Mortensen
says), and his American mother were living in New York City when
Viggo Jr., was born, in 1958. The Mortensens moved often, living
in Argentina, Venezuela and Denmark before Mortensen was a teen.
"He was just restless," Mortensen says of his
father. "He always has been."
After his parents divorced when he was 11, Mortensen and his two
younger brothers moved with their mother to upstate New York,
where he went to high school. Mortensen studied government and
Spanish literature (he's fluent in Spanish and Danish) at St.
Lawrence University before moving to Denmark, where he sold
flowers while focussing on writing poetry and short stories.
In the early 1980s, Mortensen followed a girlfriend to New York
and became increasingly interested in movies and theatre; "not
just liking them but wondering how it was done," he
says. He was particularly inspired by the performances of Ingrid
Bergman in Joan of Arc and Meryl Streep in The Deer Hunter.
He found a listing for the Warren Robertson repertory theatre,
and went in for what he thought was an audition for a play.
Instead, he found himself signed up for an acting class.
Robertson encouraged him, and so while working odd jobs such as
waiting tables and bartending, Mortensen committed himself to
the workshop.
"Right out of the gate, I was auditioning for leads in
studio movies. It would get down to the last two people,"
says Mortensen, who recalls the whirlwind of being flown first
class to England for the lead in 1984's Greystoke : The
Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. "The next
thing I know, I'm training with monkeys."
He didn't get the part. In fact, he didn't get many. And when he
got cast for such films as Jonathan Demme's Swing Shift
or Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo, his scenes
were deleted. "I would stop telling my family when I'd
be in a movie," he says. But Mortensen soldiered on,
landing his debut as an Amish farmer in Witness, as well as a
part in the 1987 cult satire Salvation ! He soon fell for his
co-star, L.A. punk band X's lead singer Exene Cervenka. They
married that year. (In the early '90s, the two divorced. Their
current relationship is "pretty good," he says.
"She knows that I love Henry, as I know that she loves
him. Beyond that, I respect her as an artist, and I think she
respects me as one." As for his current love life,
"I don't think it's pertinent," he says.
Mortensen's career began to heat up after he won the Drama-Logue
Critics Award for his Los Angeles stage performance in Bent in
1987. Four years later, he got his first big break, when he
delivered a vivid performance as a malcontent in Sean Penn's The
Indian Runner, a Vietnam-era story of two Nebraska brothers.
"I remember Sean saying to me on about the sixth week of
shooting," Indian producer Phillips recalls, "'Don,
Viggo's going to be a humongous star.'"
Although Penn was directing, and David Morse, playing the other
brother, was ostensibly the star, Mortensen's performance is
what stands out. "I'll never forget when we were out one
night and there was the poster [which highlights Mortensen's
character] on Sunset Boulevard," Phillips says.
"We pulled over to the side and Viggo said, 'Don, it
frightens me.'"
In the ensuing years, as Mortensen took parts in B-level duds
such as Boiling Point and American Yakuza, and in more credible
films such as Crimson Tide and The Portrait of a Lady,
he maintained an ambivalence about the industry, especially the
compromising nature of being a cog in the moviemaking machine.
"What are you going to do ?" asks Mortensen,
who says he's less frustrated now. "It comes down to the
fact that you supply the blue, and they supply the other colours
and mix them with your blue, and maybe there's some blue left in
the painting, and maybe there isn't. Maybe there wasn't supposed
to be any there in the first place. So have some fun and make a
good blue and walk away. I try to do that. Sometimes I succeed."
The metaphor is more than a little apt. Throughout his career,
Mortensen has passionately expressed himself through other
mediums, especially painting, photography and poetry. On the set
of Hidalgo, while the crew was heading for cover during a
passing rain shower, Mortensen seized the moment to grab the
Hasselblad camera he's had for 20 years and photograph a pack of
dripping wet horses against a fence. In fact, he's always taking
pictures (especially of his son). Driving down a road, you cab
expect Mortensen to slam on the brakes and jump outside to
photograph whatever engages him.
"He doesn't walk by something interesting and ignore it,"
Miranda Otto says. "Let's face it, acting can be a very
uncreative process. I can see why he wants to do other things
where you don't have to collaborate with anyone else. It's more
pure."
Though Mortensen concedes that "the final work is not
done by you" in making a movie, he equates the mediums
: "I think it's all the same thing. How I feel doing one
or the other, and trying to stay open to what might happen, you
know, that happens in photography, poetry, painting and acting."
Dennis Hopper, whom Mortensen met working on The Indian
Runner, is a friend and kindred spirit : The two paint,
photograph, and "just go out and look at things"
together. "Most actors seem to think that their art
stops with memorising other people's words," says
Hopper, who gets frustrated by how others view actors who work
in other mediums. "They always think, 'Oh, he's acting.'"
Hopper believes Mortensen's passion for the arts is genuine :
"Rainer Maria Rilke said something like, 'If you ask
yourself in the most silent hour of your night, if it were
denied you to create, would you truly die ?'" Hopper
says. "I know that Viggo has asked himself that question
and his answer was 'Yes.'"
"Fuck you, you motherfucking pansy-ass queers !"
Clearly, Mortensen's fame hasn't extended to the town of Libby,
Montana, where we have stopped to buy sandwiches from the local
Subway. While souped-up Ford trucks cruise by, a little white
Nissan stops at the traffic light, and a young woman screams
with half her body outside the sunroof. "Fucking queers,"
she yells at us while teenage guffaws emanate from the packed
car. "Fuck you !"
Standing closest to them, Mortensen continues to talk on his
cell phone and barely registers the verbal assault. From inside
the truck, Henry giggles as I walk towards a garbage can. "Fucking
queer," Mortensen deadpans with a grin, looking at me.
Mortensen's strongest fan base is in the over-20, female
demographic. His physical appeal - the soulful eyes, high
cheekbones, cleft chin, and general ruggedness - is obviously
apparent. He was named one of People's most beautiful of 2002,
but, again, he taps into something that extend beyond the
physical.
"From the moment that I saw him onscreen," says
Otto, "I thought, 'Shit, he looks incredible. Here's a
character I don't have to pretend to be in love with.'"
Diane Lane also sees the appeal: "I think he has a
quality of self-knowing that challenges everyone that he meets -
perhaps unwittingly. But the electrical charge of that challenge
of 'How well do you know yourself ? Cause I know myself real
well.' You know, that's kind of the unspoken Viggo experience.
He's also fascinated by other people. And when you combine those
elements, it's very charismatic. It can definitely be
interpreted as sexy."
It's next to impossible to have a serious conversation on the
subject with Mortensen. Consider the following :
Q : What do you think makes you sexy ?
VM : I don't really know how to deal with that
question. I'm sure that there's just as many people who think
I'm a grizzled hack.
Q : I guess Brad Pitt's the pretty boy type of hunk
and you're the, you know...
VM : ... the grizzled hack version ? Do you think we
should play brothers or something ?
Q : You should.
VM : Or lovers ?
Q : Maybe lovers. Yeah.
VM : You think people would pay to see that ?
Unlike most celebrities, who usually have some functionary
rubber-stamp responses to fan mail, Mortensen not only reads
what he receives - he "answers every single one."
he says. "But at the end of this month, I'm not going to
do it any more. I appreciate it, but I can't spend several hours
every day doing this." His book signings and gallery
exhibits are turning into mob scenes, sometimes numbering into
the several hundreds, as was the case with an art opening in
Santa Monica last year. "It was packed with women from
20 to 45 years old. Just to see Viggo," Phillips says.
"Not necessarily to see his art." Mortensen
deflects the attention. "That was due to Lord of the
Rings," he demurs.
Actually, Mortensen's humility and generosity turned his Rings
co-stars into some of his biggest fans. They tell you of the
time when a snowstorm shut down production. The cast was being
transported to safety when Mortensen seized a four-wheel drive
vehicle and drove back to the set in order to save the hobbits'
four-feet-tall scale doubles from getting snowbound. There are
also the many gifts, usually beautifully framed original
photographs, which he gave to his many friends on the set.
Mortensen seems to have won over all of his Rings peers, but
none more than Bloom. "He was just so giving and
gracious," says the 25-year-old actor, who recalls
Mortensen letting him upstage him in at least one scene. "For
a young actor starting out in the film industry, he was the most
fantastic education I could have had."
Bloom tells a story that occurred when the Rings crew returned
to New Zealand in the summer of 2002 for sound dubbing and
pickups for The Two Towers. "I flew over just to
visit Viggo," says Bloom, who had heard that Mortensen
was organising a reunion dinner. He. Mortensen and Henry, Ian
McKellen, Liv Tyler (who plays Arwen), and members of the crew
took a bus to the countryside. After dinner, Bloom and Henry
went for a walk and noticed how beautifully the moon was shining
on a nearby river.
"We ran back and said, 'Everyone's got to see this.'"
Bloom recalls. "I was having a Viggo moment - running
out, getting people to come and check out the moon."
Some decided to wade into the river, but Mortensen suggested the
more perilous task of crossing the river. "I'm like,
'Fuck off,' and he says, 'Come on.' So were barefoot,
waist-high in water, walking on these little rocks to get to the
other side and I'm doing it because I'm an idiot and I'm
following his lead. Because he's an idiot. And because he's
amazing," Bloom laughs. "I can't believe how
much this is going to make it sound like I'm in love with the
guy."
After making it to Idaho and spending the night, Mortensen and I
take a drive into the forest outside his brother's place to
clear the air a bit. Luckily, the airline is going to let him
use a faxed copy of his passport, so he and Henry will be able
to fly out of Spokane. That's one less thing to worry about. But
he wants me to know that he hasn't been able to articulate some
ideas in the fog of the past two days.
In addition to deconstructing his love for Adam Sandler's Happy
Gilmore (which we had spent 20 minutes discussing the night
before) and espousing the virtues of industrialism, he wants to
talk about the first day of shooting Hidalgo in Montana, when a
torrential rain was dampening the spirits of the crew.
"They looked so fuckin' miserable that suddenly it was
hilarious," he says. The point being : "You can
try to control everything in your life or you can just let go,"
he says. "There are filmmakers who resist, and are
usually screaming and fighting the elements, and fighting
nature. And in the process making other people's lives hell."
Mortensen believes there is order in the chaos. "You
know, there are freakish and unexpected events that make up our
lives. You have to be open to suffering a little,"
Mortensen says. "There's the philosopher, Schopenhauer,
right ? He talked about how out of the randomness, there is the
apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be
glimpsed later on. When you're an old guy, you can look back,
and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can
see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you
see it more clearly than anyone."
The glimpse is essential. It is why he photographs, paints, runs
himself ragged - and why he is an actor. "You try to
communicate to others and to yourself, whether it be through a
photograph, an e-mail, or an idea. Or if I just want to show you
a pond. just making the effort."
"There's a yearning to connect," Mortensen
says.
It's why he
wrote a poem called "Matinee," in 1997. It reads :
- After years of merging and allowing
- Yourself to be assimilated
- Your hair and clothes
- Have turned brown
- Then, one afternoon you leave a theater
- After seeign the restored
- Version of "The Hero Returns”
- And find yourself wanting
- To be treated special
"I remember specific moments like that," he
says, "being a little kid, walking out of that theatre,
and feeling connected to the people who were on the screen."
The Hero
Returns is not a real movie. It's more of an ideal - one that
Mortensen hopes audiences will connect with when they enter
theatres in December.
"In a
story like Lord of the Rings, whether the Ring and Sauron are
evil is incidental to me. Even if we were not to get the Ring
anywhere near Mount Doom. Even if we all died. It doesn't really
matter," Mortensen says. "It's the fact that everybody
got together and decided to go on this trip. That's the thing.
That's the miracle."
by Tom Roston
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