Viggo Mortensen Is A Man Of The World

Added: 11/21/2007

Viggo Mortensen has seen a lot of things, been to a lot of places, and tried a lot of ways to get into show business before he finally became a critically acclaimed actor. With a name like Viggo it is understandable that people think he is European with a thick accent but that is not the case and he has taken that name Viggo and made it into a household. If it weren’t for his son he may have never achieved his massive success.

Viggo Mortensen Jr. was born on October 20, 1958 to a Danish farmer and his New York wife. When Viggo Sr. met his wife Grace the two decided to settle in New York to start a family. Two years after Viggo Jr. was born Viggo Sr. moved the family to South America where he took up chicken farming. The Mortensens had two more boys, Charles and Walter, but the continuing deterioration of the marriage caused the couple to split when Viggo Jr. was 11. When the divorce was being finalized Grace Mortensen moved herself and her three boys back to her hometown in New York State where Viggo Jr. flourished. Viggo Mortensen became and academic and athletic star at Watertown High School and hopes were high for his continued academic career after his 1976 high school graduation as he moved on to St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Viggo Mortensen was an academic success again in college but when he graduated from college he was unsure as to what he wanted to do with his life so, using his dual Denmark and United States citizenship, he went off to live in Denmark where he wanted to find himself through writing poetry and short stories. During this time Viggo Mortensen got one of his books of poetry published but it was not long before he fell in love and in 1982 decided to move back to New York to search for love and fame as an author.

Viggo Mortensen found life in New York in the 1980’s difficult and he was a bartender and waiter to make ends meet. He kept writing the whole time and also began taking up jazz music as well. Since the 1980’s Viggo Mortensen has become such an accomplished jazz musician that he has released three albums and intends to release more. For his writing he eventually started the Perceval Press publishing company but for the first part of the 1980’s success such as this was eluding the ever restless Viggo Mortensen. Finally in 1985 he got a break with a role in the movie Witness. His role was a small one but the critics took notice and soon Viggo Mortensen was beginning to get the calls for acting jobs he had always wanted.

Viggo Mortensen is an accomplished horse back rider and he loves to take roles that show off his ability to ride a horse. In 1988 he took a role in the movie Fresh Horses and the world got a really good chance to see what Viggo Mortensen could do. It was also around this time, in 1987 to be exact, that Viggo Mortensen married Exene Cervenka who was a punk musician and lead singer for the band X. They had a child together in 1988 and stayed married until 1998. But that was not an accurate representation of the marriage as they had actually split in 1991 or 1992 and didn’t finalize the divorce until 1998. They remained close friends and raised their son Henry as best they could. It was Henry Mortensen that would change his father’s career forever.

In 1999 Viggo Mortensen was called upon to play the role of Aragorn and initially Viggo was going to turn it down because he had never heard of the Lord Of The Rings and had no desire to play the role. His son Henry pleaded with his father to take the role as Henry was a huge fan of the Lord Of The Rings books. Viggo listened to his son, took the role in the Lord Of The Rings movies, and the rest is history.

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