Danish-American actor Viggo Mortensen has had quite an interesting set of acing credits on his record, dabbling in various genres, be it fantasy, gangster, or classic drama. He debuted with a small role in Harrison Ford-starred Witness and gained mainstream popularity with a recurring role in The Lord of the Rings franchise.
And right when people thought Mortensen would continue acting box-office blockbusters like the aforementioned franchise, he followed up his legacy with a slew of three Academy-award nominated roles, along with a slew of other critically-acclaimed roles. Mortensen's filmography might not be that extensive but is still diverse enough. Here we count down 10 of his most quintessential performances.
Eastern Promises
Mortensen plays a mysterious Russian gangster called Nikolai working for a shady mobster family involved in sex trafficking. The movie directed by David Cronenberg (with whom Mortensen collaborated on two more movies) was lauded for its storyline, plot twists, and of course, Mortensen's acting which earned him his first Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
He pulls off a flawless faux-Russian accent brilliantly throughout the entirety of the film. The actor took great care in giving a realistic portrayal, by talking to crime specialists and watching documentaries on the Russian mafia. He wore the mafia tattoos on his skin off-screen too. The tattoos looked so authentic that diners in a Russian eatery grew pale with fear, intimidated by his look. From that day, Viggo decided to wash off the tattoos when he was not acting!
Green Book
From Russian, Mortensen's nationality changed to Italian-American for this heartwarming true story. He plays Tony Lip, a fast-talking hustler who is hired to drive black pianist Don Shirley (played by Mahershala Ali) to his various concert venues. We see Tony as a narrow-minded, borderline racist character in the start but the road trip changes his life. He learns writing love letters to his wife, living life, and understanding the racial realities of America in the 1960s. In exchange, he makes Don Shirley taste fried chicken for the first time.
Mortensen seems to have a whole lot of fun in this role. It's probably his happiest performance, considering that he portrayed many troubled characters in the past. He earned his third Academy Award nomination for this role.
A Walk On The Moon
This 1999 film finds Viggo Mortensen dabbling with the period drama genre. The setting is that of the Woodstock Festival in 1969 (the same year when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, hence the name) and Mortensen is a free-wheeling travel salesman smitten with a married yet frustrated housewife, played by Diane Lane in one of her career-best performances.
While Lane took most of the acclaim, Mortensen also seems comfortable in the skin of a charming stranger who serves as her escape from her boring reality. If he did any more romantic dramas like this, he would easily be the classic cute white guy-types on the cover of a Nicholas Sparks novel!
The Two Faces Of January
Ditching the cute-guy image, Viggo Mortensen again dons the robes of a bad boy playing con man Chester MacFarland in the romantic thriller The Two Faces Of January. Apart from delivering smart dialogues, he's dressed smartly too for his role wearing suits and shades in exotic European locations. This role raises the speculation on what a charming, middle-aged James Bond would Mortensen make! He shares equally charming chemistry with Kristen Dunst, who plays his wife.
Along with their performances, the film was also praised for its Hitchcockian twists and Hossein Amini 's (of Drive fame) smooth storytelling.
The Road
Viggo Mortensen plays the exact opposite of the previous role for this post-apocalyptic survival flick. He's all muddy, dark circles rest under his eyes and he sports a scraggly beard to play an exhausted father trying to ensure his son's survival in the face of cannibals on the streets. Kodi Smith McPhee plays the son with equal conviction as Mortensen. This movie is basically The Pursuit of Happyness in the apocalypse!
Mortensen seemed to be so in-character portraying the troubled protagonist that he seemed to carry some of that pessimism in the film's promotion events too. 'Further devastation of the air, land and sea is obviously a very real possibility,', he said in an e-mail interview commenting on how The Road's setting of a ravaged, polluted Earth might soon turn into reality.
A History Of Violence
Based on the graphic novel of the same name by Vertigo Comics, A History Of Violence finds Mortensen as Tom Stall, a humble bartender who becomes a local hero after he attacks a hero. But as the plot thickens, we realize that he's not that humble and that he's a man with his own 'history of violence'. This brings him in contact with a gangster (played to perfection by Ed Harris) who threatens his life and family, leading to a dark downward spiral in Tom's life.
Critics and audiences aside, Viggo himself has called this film one of the best projects he has been in, and referred to it as a 'perfect film noir'.
Appaloosa
Appaloosa is a modern Western which reunites Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris as two valiant crime fighters in a sleepy town, protecting it from a terrorizing local rancher. The synopsis is straight out of a Western pulp novel, but it's the chemistry between the two leads and an amusing love triangle which made the movie worth a watch.
The movie seems to be gritty but Mortensen and Harris's witty exchanges add an enjoyable light tone too to the film. It goes on to show that Mortensen is great at bromances. Green Book and Eastern Promises (where he shares screen space with French actor Vincent Cassel) are fine examples in support of this.
A Dangerous Method
Viggo Mortensen plays none another than Dr. Sigmund Freud in this film (yes, Freud is the same person who might have made boys feel awkward around their mothers, thanks to his 'Oedipal' complex). Michael Fassbender plays psychologist Carl Jung who attempts to cure psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein's (played by Keira Knightley) hysteria through Freud's theories. The doctor and patient fall in love two years later, creating a rift with Freud in this period drama's complicated storyline. Eventually, the personal conflicts among the three lead to the birth of psychoanalysis.
As noted before, it is always a delight to see Viggo Mortensen pull of varied accents for the varied characters that he plays. For playing the historical Austrian neurologist, he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role.
Captain Fantastic
Captain Fantastic is a colorful, bizarre comedy-drama that feels like it has been directed by Wes Anderson. Mortensen plays a total hippie of a dad who raises his six kids in the forest with his wife. As a result, the family turns out to be athletically fit, eco-friendly, and self-sufficient. When his wife dies, the father, however, decides to expose his children to the other side of the world.
Mortensen's role is nothing less than thought-provoking and emotional, even though his character gets to have several moments of deadpan humor. The Oscars, the Globes, the BAFTAs, and many other award circuits nominated him for Best Actor but he managed to lose in most of them again. If Viggo Mortensen doesn't pull off an Academy Award-winning role soon, he might just get one for Lifetime Achievement later.
The Lord Of The Rings series
Of course, no list of Viggo Mortensen performances would really be complete without mentioning his turn as Aragorn, a role from The Lord Of The Rings trilogy which helped him gain massive international attention. Aragorn is an exiled heir who fights for his right to the throne of Gondor as well as the Free Peoples of the Middle-Earth. He's possibly one of the most just rulers in cinematic history, and Viggo Mortensen plays this character with all the heroic conviction he can gather.
The actor's portrayals of gangsters, a driver, a hippie-dad and various other characters show that they are imperfect beings with their own flaws. This is the role of Aragorn seems to be too perfect to be played by Viggo Mortensen. And yet his Aragorn has his moments of looking troubled and doubtful too, in the face of the Herculean task of leading his people. Now, if only JRR Tolkein ever saw him on-screen!