New Line Cinema, Carlos Alvarez/WireImage.com
Happy Birthday to Viggo Mortensen who turns 56 today!
Viggo Peter Mortensen was born on October 20, 1958 in New York City. When he was young, his family moved around, living in Venezuela, Denmark, and Argentina. No wonder he’s multilingual—at last count, he can speak Arabic, Danish, English, French, German, Lakota, Italian, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish!
I suppose I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that he can also speak Elvish (“two kinds of Elvish,” he would point out). After all, he did play Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, and he had many scenes that called upon his talent of picking up languages.
Of course, LOTR wasn’t purely a scholarly experience. Legendary swordmaster and LOTR fight choreographer Bob Anderson called Viggo “the best swordsman I’ve ever trained.” But that didn’t happen without a few bumps and bruises. He broke two toes during a scene in The Two Towers where he kicked an orc helmet out of frustration (that take is actually the one that made it into the movie), and he broke a tooth during a fight sequence. He didn’t want to stop, though, and he asked if someone would just glue it back on!
Viggo also requested more screen time for scenes with his horse. They developed quite a bond during filming, and he even bought Uraeus, who played the horse Brego in LOTR. In fact, in one of the most touching moments from the LOTR extended edition interviews, stunt woman Jane Abbott describes how Viggo bought Florian, the horse she worked with who played Asfaloth, and gave him to her.
When it comes to working with horses, Viggo had this to say during an interview with ESPN: “Oh, it’s just like with people. You’re going to get along better working with them — human or equine — if you ask politely rather than demand that they do things. If you earn someone’s trust rather than insist on it, then there’s some halfway place you meet at and the horse ends up working more eagerly with you rather than it being a chore. It’s a lot harder and more tiring, and you don’t get the same results on screen if it’s otherwise.”
Recently, Viggo has been keeping busy with all different kinds of films. Depending on where you live, you might be able to catch him in The Two Faces of January, starring with Kirsten Dunst and Oscar Isaac, Jauja, starring alongside Ghita Nørby, or Far from Men, starring alongside Reda Kateb.
From all of us here at Middle-earth News, we’d like to wish Viggo a very Happy Birthday!
