Viggo Mortensen Trivia: 55 interesting facts about the actor!

Viggo Mortensen is a Danish- American actor, author, painter and photographer. Let’s see some amazing facts and trivia about him!

1.His full name is Viggo Peter Mortensen J

2. He was born October 20, 1958.

3. Viggo Mortensen was born in New York City. His mother, Grace Gamble (née Atkinson), was American, and his father, Viggo Peter Mortensen Sr., is Danish; the two met in Norway.

4. His maternal grandfather was from Nova Scotia, Canada,and his maternal grandmother’s family was from New England.

5. The family moved to Venezuela, then Denmark, and eventually settled in Argentina in the provinces of Córdoba, Chaco, and Buenos Aires, where he attended primary school and acquired a fluent proficiency in Spanish while his father managed poultry farms and ranches.

6. At the age of 11, his parents divorced and he returned to New York with his mother, where he spent the rest of his childhood, graduating from Watertown High School in Watertown, New York in 1976.

7. He then attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, earning a bachelor’s degree in Spanish Studies and Politics in 1980.

8. Afterward, he went to Europe and lived in Spain, England, and Denmark where he took various jobs such as driving trucks in Esbjerg and selling flowers in Copenhagen.[

9. He returned to the United States to pursue an acting career

10. Viggo Mortensen made his first film appearance playing an Amish farmer in Peter Weir’s Witness.

11. Mortensen had actually acted in at least one prior film, The Purple Rose of Cairo, but his scenes were deleted from the final cuts.

12. Also in 1985, he was cast in the role of Bragg on Search for Tomorrow. Mortensen’s 1987 performance in Bent at the Coast Playhouse, Los Angeles, won him a Dramalogue Critics’ Award.

13. Coincidentally, the play, about homosexual concentration camp prisoners, was originally brought to prominence by Ian McKellen, with whom Mortensen later costarred in The Lord of the Rings.

14. In 1987, Mortensen guest starred as a corrupt police detective on the hit series Miami Vice.

15. In 2009, 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.

16. While it was reported in April 2009 that Mortensen had, at least temporarily, retired from film acting,Mortensen said he was misquoted.

17. In a 2012 interview, he denied that he ever said he was retiring, only that he didn’t have “plans to do another movie” at the time and that he was “taking a little break now. I don’t have anything lined up.”

18. In 2009 he joined the cast of The Road, a film adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same name, and collaborated with David Cronenberg for a third time on A Dangerous Method.

19. After two decades, Mortensen returned to theatre in 2011, starring in Ariel Dorfman’s Purgatorio in Madrid.

20. Viggo Mortensen is also an author, with various books of poetry, photography, and painting published.

21. Mortensen is a painter and photographer.

22. His paintings are frequently abstract and often contain fragments of his poetry in them.

23. His paintings have been featured in galleries worldwide, and many of the paintings of the artist he portrayed in A Perfect Murder are his own.

25. Mortensen experiments with his poetry and music by mixing the two art forms. He has collaborated with guitarist Buckethead on several albums, mostly released on his own(Perceval Press) or TDRS Music.

26. Viggo was first introduced to Buckethead’s work while working on sounds for an educational CD on Greek mythology.

27. The finished product included a guitar part by Buckethead, which caught Viggo’s ear and led him to initiate contact with the guitarist. The collaboration grew from there.

28. Mortensen is featured on The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King soundtrack, singing “Aragorn’s Coronation” (the name of the extended version of this song in the 3rd original sound track is “The Return of the King”), the words by Tolkien and the music composed by Mortensen.

20. In the extended DVD edition of the first Lord of the Rings movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, he sings the song “The Lay of Beren and Lúthien”.

30. His poems are written in English, Danish, and Spanish.

31. Following his appearance in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, in 2006 he was granted an honorary doctorate by his alma mater, St. Lawrence University.

32. On October 13, 2006, he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Province and the City of León, Spain.

33. On April 16, 2010, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of the Dannebrog.

34. In 2017 he received a Best Actor nomination in the 89th Academy Awards for his role in Captain Fantastic.

35. Viggo Mortensen holds dual American-Danish citizenship.

36. He speaks fluent English, Danish, Spanish and French; he is also conversational in Italian, and understands Norwegian and Swedish.

37. He has stated that he was raised speaking English and Spanish and at times feels more comfortable expressing himself in Spanish.

38. He also has some knowledge of Catalan; twice, when receiving a prize in Catalonia, he made a short speech in Catalan.

39. Mortensen met his wife, actress/singer Exene Cervenka (of the first wave California punk band X), in 1986 on the set of the comedy Salvation!, a parody of televangelism

40. The couple married on July 8, 1987.

41. On January 28, 1988, Cervenka gave birth to a son, Henry Blake Mortensen. Mortensen and Cervenka lived in Idaho for three years

42. Mortensen and Cervenka separated in 1992, and were divorced in 1997.

43. Since 2009, he has been in a relationship with the Spanish actress Ariadna Gil.

44. Mortensen is a fan of football with his favorite players being Argentine star Diego Maradona and Héctor “Bambino” Veira.

45. He has professed a liking of Argentine club San Lorenzo de Almagro, English team Fulham FC, Turkish side Besiktas after attending games whilst shooting The Two Faces of January in Turkey,and both the Argentine and Danish national teams.

46. He is also a hockey fan, particularly of the Montreal Canadiens.

47. He wore a Montreal Canadiens T-shirt underneath his armour throughout the filming of the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

48. He is also a fan of the New York Mets, and in an interview promoting 2009 film The Road was seen wearing apparel indicating his support of the Australian Football League’s Collingwood Magpies football club.

49. While appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman, he held a sign supporting the New York Giants.

50. Mortensen was a good friend of Icelandic painter Georg Guðni Hauksson up until his death in 2011.

51. Mortensen had long been an admirer of Hauksson’s work as a landscape artist, and the two published books together as well as maintaining a close friendship.

52. He was one of the signees of the “Toronto Declaration” protesting against spotlighting Tel-Aviv at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009.

53. Mortensen has owned property in northern Sandpoint, Idaho, and spends time there when not filming movies.

54. In an interview with Bill Maher, Mortensen confirmed that he smoked marijuana.

55. Viggo Mortensen authorizes a line of custom-made Swedish and American knives sold under his name.