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Viggo Mortensen
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17Biography
Born: Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. on 20 October 1958, in New York City, New York, US.
Viggo Mortensen is a Golden Globe- and Academy Award-nominated American theatre and filmactor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He is perhaps best known for his role as Aragorn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy and as Nikolai Luzhin in David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises.
Mortensen was born in New York City, New York. His American mother, Grace Gamble (née Atkinson), and Danish father, Viggo Peter Mortensen, Sr. (a farm manager who worked in business), met in Norway. His family moved to Venezuela, Argentina and Denmark, settling in Argentina, where his father managed chicken farms and ranches. They remained there until Mortensen was age eleven, when his parents divorced and his mother moved back to New York. He moved with his father to Copenhagen, Denmark. Mortensen and his father eventually went back to the United States. After high school, he returned to Denmark, and became a truck driver in Esbjerg, Denmark, before, again, returning to the United States to pursue an acting career.
After several years of experience in live theatre, Mortensen made his first film appearance playing an Amish farmer in Peter Weir's Witness (1985). During the 1990s Mortensen appeared in supporting roles in a variety of films, including Jane Campion's The Portrait of a Lady, Young Guns II, Sean Penn's The Indian Runner, Brian DePalma's Carlito's Way, Tony Scott's Crimson Tide, Ridley Scott's G.I. Jane, Andrew Davis's A Perfect Murder, Gus Van Sant's 1998 remake of Psycho, Betty Thomas's 28 Days and The Prophecy with Christopher Walken.
I don't plan [my career]; I wait and hope the right thing will find me.
Mortensen's major breakthrough came in 1999 with his casting as Aragorn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy (released in 2001, 2002 and 2003). Mortensen was a last-minute replacement for Stuart Townsend, and wouldn't have taken the part of Aragorn had it not been for his son's enthusiasm for the J. R. R. Tolkien trilogy. In 2004, 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 race for a massive contest prize.
In 2005, Mortensen starred in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence. He was nominated for a Satellite Award for Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture for this role. In 2006, he starred as Captain Diego Alatriste in Alatriste, based on the series of novels The Adventures of Captain Alatriste written by the Spanish writer Arturo Pérez-Reverte.
In September 2007 the film Eastern Promises, directed by David Cronenberg, was released to critical acclaim for the film itself and for Mortensen's performance as a Russian gangster on the rise in London. Mortensen's performance resulted in him winning the Best Performance by an Actor in a British Independent Film award from the British Independent Film Awards. He also received an Academy Award nomination in the Best Actor category.
