Viggo Mortensen made his film debut in a small role in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness.
51 Facts About Viggo Mortensen
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In 2005, Viggo Mortensen won critical acclaim for his acting in David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence.
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Two years later, Viggo Mortensen earned acclaim in another Cronenberg film, Eastern Promises ; he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
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Viggo Mortensen gained additional Academy Award nominations for his leading roles in Captain Fantastic and Green Book.
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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.
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When Viggo Mortensen was 11 and his brothers 8 and 6, their parents divorced.
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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 politics.
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Viggo Mortensen eventually returned to the United States to pursue an acting career.
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Viggo Mortensen was cast in Witness because the director thought he had the right face for the part of an Amish man.
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Viggo Mortensen had been simultaneously cast for another role as a soldier in Shakespeare in the Park's production of Henry V, but he decided to choose acting in the film because he wanted to try something new.
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Viggo Mortensen credited that decision and the very positive experience on the film as the start of his film career.
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Viggo Mortensen later costarred with him in the film trilogy The Lord of the Rings.
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In 1987, Viggo Mortensen guest starred as a police detective on the hit TV series Miami Vice.
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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 May 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Viggo Mortensen joined other stars from The Lord of the Rings for actor Josh Gad's YouTube series Reunited Apart, which reunites the cast of popular movies through video-conferencing, and promotes donations to non-profit charities.
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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.
20.
In 2005, Viggo Mortensen starred in David Cronenberg's movie 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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In 2009, Viggo Mortensen appeared as himself in the 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 and the 2018 film Green Book, for which he received his second and third Academy Award nominations.
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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 reunited with David Cronenberg in the horror sci-fi film Crimes of the Future alongside Kristen Stewart with filming beginning in August 2021.
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Viggo Mortensen will reunite with Lisandro Alonso on the film Eureka.
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Viggo Mortensen is an author, with various books of poetry, photography, and painting published.
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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's poems are written in English, Danish, and Spanish.
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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 disease.
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In 2016, Viggo Mortensen traveled to New York to take care of his father, who died a year later from dementia.
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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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Viggo Mortensen was one of the signers of the "Toronto Declaration" protesting against spotlighting Tel Aviv at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009.
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In 2015 Viggo Mortensen donated $1,000 to Irish political party Sinn Fein.
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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.
51.
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.