1. Viggo Mortensen has received nominations for three Academy Awards, three BAFTA Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.
66 Facts About Viggo Mortensen
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Viggo Mortensen gained international attention for his breakthrough role as Aragorn in the fantasy trilogy The Lord of the Rings.
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Viggo Mortensen later starred in several David Cronenberg films including A History of Violence, Eastern Promises, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, and A Dangerous Method.
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Viggo Mortensen gained further Academy Award nominations for his leading roles as an anarchist father in Captain Fantastic and as Tony Lip in Green Book.
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Viggo Mortensen made his directorial debut with Falling, in which he starred.
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Viggo Mortensen composed and performed music for films including The Lord of the Rings soundtrack, and has collaborated with guitarist Buckethead on several albums.
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In 2002, Viggo Mortensen founded Perceval Press to publish his works and the works of little-known artists and authors.
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Viggo Mortensen's mother was American, while his father was Danish.
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Viggo Mortensen's maternal grandfather was a Canadian from Nova Scotia.
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Viggo Mortensen attended primary school and acquired a fluent proficiency in Spanish while his father managed poultry farms and ranches.
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Viggo Mortensen was baptized Lutheran, the tradition of his father, though he now identifies as an atheist.
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When Viggo Mortensen was 11 and his brothers 8 and 6, their parents divorced.
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In 1969, the three boys returned with their mother to the United States, where Viggo Mortensen spent the rest of his childhood in Northern New York State.
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Viggo Mortensen attended St Lawrence University in Canton, New York, earning a bachelor's degree in 1980 in Spanish studies and government.
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Viggo Mortensen was one of the four finalists to play the title role of Tarzan in the adventure film Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, though the role eventually went to Christopher Lambert.
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Viggo Mortensen was cast because the director thought he had the right face for the part.
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Viggo Mortensen credited that decision and the positive experience on the film as the start of his film career.
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The play, which revolves around homosexual prisoners in a concentration camp in Nazi Germany, was known for the leading performance by Ian McKellen, with whom Viggo Mortensen later costarred in the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings.
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Viggo Mortensen guest starred as a police detective on the hit TV series Miami Vice.
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In 1988, Viggo Mortensen played a minor part as Green, the abusive husband of Jewel, in Fresh Horses.
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Sandy Dennis, who played Frank Roberts's mother in the film and was a personal friend of Viggo Mortensen, was dying of ovarian cancer during filming.
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Viggo Mortensen described the filming experience as having an "undercurrent of loss," and wrote the poem "For Sandy Dennis" in her honor.
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In 1992, Viggo Mortensen starred in Ruby Cairo alongside Liam Neeson and Andie MacDowell.
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Viggo Mortensen acted in Crimson Tide, Daylight, A Walk on the Moon, The Passion of Darkly Noon, 28 Days, and The Prophecy, with Christopher Walken.
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In 1998, Viggo Mortensen appeared in remakes of two Alfred Hitchcock movies: Psycho and A Perfect Murder.
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Viggo Mortensen received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Aragorn, and was ranked No 15 on a 2015 survey of "The 100 Greatest Movie Characters" conducted by Empire.
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In 2004, Viggo Mortensen starred as Frank Hopkins in Hidalgo, the story of an ex-army courier who travels to Arabia to compete with his horse, Hidalgo, in a dangerous desert race for a contest prize.
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Viggo Mortensen starred in David Cronenberg's 2005 film A History of Violence as a family man revealed to have had an unsavory previous career.
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Viggo Mortensen was nominated for a Satellite Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture for this role.
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Viggo Mortensen was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor.
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Viggo Mortensen appeared as himself in the 2009 film Reclaiming the Blade, in which he discussed his passion for the sword and his sword-work in films such as The Lord of the Rings and Alatriste.
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Viggo Mortensen talked about his work with Bob Anderson, the swordmaster on The Lord of the Rings, Alatriste, Pirates of the Caribbean and many others.
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In 2009, Viggo Mortensen performed in The People Speak, a documentary feature film that uses dramatic and musical performances of the letters, diaries, and speeches of everyday Americans, based on historian Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.
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Viggo Mortensen starred in the 2016 film Captain Fantastic, for which he received his second Academy Award nomination.
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Viggo Mortensen portrayed Tony Lip, an Italian-American bouncer hired to drive and protect pianist Don Shirley on a tour through the Jim Crow South from 1962 to 1963.
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Viggo Mortensen received his third Academy Award nomination for his portrayal of Lip.
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In 2020, Viggo Mortensen released his directorial debut Falling, which he wrote, produced, composed the score for and starred in alongside Lance Henriksen at the Sundance Film Festival.
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Viggo Mortensen had based the story on his own family's history, including his parents suffering from dementia.
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Viggo Mortensen was cast as British cave diver Rick Stanton in the biographical film Thirteen Lives directed by Ron Howard which was released in July 2022.
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Viggo Mortensen was taught cave diving by Stanton personally to prepare for the role.
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Viggo Mortensen reunited with David Cronenberg in the horror sci-fi film Crimes of the Future.
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Viggo Mortensen wrote, directed, and stars in a Western film titled The Dead Don't Hurt.
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Viggo Mortensen is an author, with various books of poetry, photography, and painting published.
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Viggo Mortensen's poems are written in English, Danish, and Spanish.
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Some published books co-authored by Viggo Mortensen are Sons of the Forest and Skovbo.
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Viggo Mortensen's paintings are frequently abstract and often contain fragments of his poetry therein.
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Viggo Mortensen's paintings have been featured in galleries worldwide, and many of the paintings of the artist he portrayed in A Perfect Murder are his own.
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Viggo Mortensen has collaborated with guitarist Buckethead on several albums, mostly released on his own label or TDRS Music.
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Viggo Mortensen was first introduced to Buckethead's work while working on sounds for an educational CD on Greek mythology.
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Viggo Mortensen is featured on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack, singing "Aragorn's Coronation", the words by Tolkien and the music composed by Viggo Mortensen.
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Viggo Mortensen has stated that he was raised speaking English and Spanish, and sometimes feels that, when speaking Spanish, he "can get to the heart of the matter better".
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Viggo Mortensen has talked about his family's struggles with dementia, seeing both of his parents, three of his four grandparents, aunts, uncles, and his stepfather battle the condition.
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In 2016, Viggo Mortensen traveled to New York to take care of his father, who died a year later.
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Two years earlier, Viggo Mortensen's mother had died from complications of the condition.
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Viggo Mortensen has expressed a liking for association football, ice hockey and baseball.
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Viggo Mortensen is a fan of the Montreal Canadiens and wore a Canadiens shirt underneath his costume throughout the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.
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Viggo Mortensen is a fan of the New York Mets and, in an interview promoting 2009 film The Road, was seen wearing apparel indicating his support for the Australian Football League's Collingwood Magpies.
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In 2009, Viggo Mortensen signed a protest stating that the Toronto International Film Festival's "Spotlight on Tel Aviv" program implicitly condoned the Israeli occupation and marginalization of Palestinians.
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Viggo Mortensen endorsed Senator Bernie Sanders for US president during the primaries for the 2016 election.
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Viggo Mortensen wrote an open letter just before Election Day 2016 in which he listed the reasons he disagreed with Hillary Clinton's policies and could not support her in the race against Donald Trump, though he thought that Clinton would be elected president.
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Viggo Mortensen went on to narrate a documentary, The Revolution Televised, about the 2016 presidential election and the protests in the aftermath of the Democratic National Convention.
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Since 2018, Viggo Mortensen has been a member of the Catalan NGO Omnium Cultural, a pro-independence organization dedicated to promoting Catalan culture and language in the arts and the public sphere.
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In May 2020, Viggo Mortensen signed an open letter urging Israel to end its blockade of the Gaza Strip.
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In October 2023, Viggo Mortensen signed the Artists4Ceasefire open letter to President Joe Biden, calling for a ceasefire in the Gaza war.
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In May 2024, Viggo Mortensen criticized Javier Milei's Argentine government, calling him a "clown" and "a puppet of the political right".
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Viggo Mortensen received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in A Dangerous Method, which won him the Canadian Screen Award.