Our interview with Viggo Mortensen

Between cinema, nature, and humanity

Viggo Mortensen was one of the stars of the latest Rome Film Fest. He was given the Lifetime Achievement Award, he hosted a very crowded master class during which he talked about his career and he introduced his second film as director, The Dead Don’t Hurt, in which he also stars alongside a memorable Vicky Krieps. Viggo Mortensen loves Italy, he loves Rome. He also speaks Italian quite well, which should not come as a surprise, considering that Viggo is fluent in seven languages. He performed in many movies, and was also nominated for the Academy Award for his role in Eastern Promises. The typical American story, I would say. A man doing a thousand jobs, living a thousand lives, who is not tied to Hollywood. He lives in Spain, independent and free from everything.

The-Dead-Don’t-Hurt

What is the first movie that you remember seeing?

I remember watching Lawrence of Arabia in Buenos Aires, at the age of four. I’ve seen a lot of movies with my mother in Argentina: probably that first movie fueled my passion for horses, which I love very much to this day. I also remember another film, Crònica de un nino solo by Leonardo Favio, an Argentinian director who would become famous.

What were your first years in Argentina like?

I used to play with my two younger siblings, and a lot by myself too. I pictured myself as an explorer, a gaucho, a native. And, although I love being with people very much, I’m still capable of staying all by myself for days.

As Aragorn in the fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings (2001–2003)

Your parents’ divorce brought you to the United States.

It was a terrible shock, a complete uprooting: I kept reading comics in Spanish and I was a San Lorenzo fan, the same team that Pope Francis supports.

When did you start loving cinema, thinking that you could do it?

Relatively late in life, when I was about twenty-two years old. I was influenced by an Italian movie, Una giornata particolare by Ettore Scola. I realized, perhaps for the first time, that there were also a script, a film director, the editing, in addition to the cast, that there was a group of people giving life to a project, the film.

In the meantime, you had been working other jobs…

Of course, as a dock worker in Copenhagen, at a factory, I sold flowers in the streets, I worked as a bartender.

Besides being a famous actor, you are also a publisher. You founded the Perceval Press. What kind of experience is it?

It’s a bit like being a film director: you need to find solutions, make choices. Making a good book is a craft job, just like filmmaking for me.

You directed a western starring a female lead. Why?

There are not many western films starring women: two with Barbara Stanwyck, 40 Guns, or The Furies, or Once Upon a Time in the West by Sergio Leone starring Claudia Cardinale. But these were all powerful, beautiful, extraordinary women. Barbara Stanwyck, for instance, owned a huge ranch.

In The Dead Don’t Hurt, you tell a more everyday life story.

Yes, I do. It’s the everyday life story of a ‘common’ woman. It describes the greatness of an ordinary life. I wanted to understand how those women were able to survive when their fathers or husbands left for the war.

How do you choose your acting roles?

After The Lord of the Rings, I was offered several roles, but you can accept a role only when you are offered one. Your power, as an actor, is saying ‘no’, as long as you can afford, financially speaking, to wait for the role that’s right for you.

You seem to have a beautiful relationship with nature.

I am happy when I’m in a forest. When I was a baby, my parents woke up and found the cradle empty and the door wide open. I had literally run away. It took a couple of hours to find me. Our dog found me sitting under a tree, in the wood.

A real passion…

When I was in high school, I would grab my bike and head outside of the city, with a sleeping bag, I slept outdoors and then I would go back to school the next morning. Being amidst plants, trees or animals has a comforting effect on me. It makes me feel in peace with the world.

Literature, cinema, art also deal with the meaning of life theme, with our mortality. How do you deal with this theme?

I believe that it is important to live together, to find moments of grace together. Like when someone smiles at you all of a sudden, or when you help a stranger.

What are you afraid of?

The lack of empathy between people.