Analysis of dream career
Once I realised Freud liked to have a good time, and enjoyed his female and male company, it became easier for me to play him
After Lord of the Rings, suddenly my poetry readings or photo exhibits had to be in bigger venues because more people came
ON a bitterly cold Tuesday morning in a dark London hotel suite, American actor Viggo Mortensen is keeping warm by sipping on the Argentinian green tea maté from a silver vessel that he stirs with a metal straw.
Would you expect any less regal a sight from the man still most famous for playing Aragorn, the man who would be king, in Lord of the Rings? In a one-on-one scenario, Mortensen is a still, quietly-spoken presence. Owing to the Scandinavian features he inherited from his Danish father’s side, he’s tall and broad, with only a few flecks of grey in his otherwise sandy-colour hair betraying his 53 years.
He’s talking about his new movie, A Dangerous Method. Directed by the one-time ‘Baron of Blood’ David Cronenberg — he of Videodrome and Dead Ringers fame — it tells the story of the friendship and rivalry between the two great figures in modern psychology, Sigmund Freud (Mortensen) and Carl Jung (the ubiquitous Michael Fassbender).
In particular, the movie focuses on their falling out over Jung’s treatment of a hysterical patient, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), who would herself later become one of the world’s first female psychoanalysts.
Mortensen, who is known to immerse himself deeply in research before a role, explains that he did all his homework on Freud, adding to the material he’d already read about the man over the years.
“I got to know more about him, and more about what people think of him,” he says. “I’d read a fair amount of his work before, but I didn’t know that much about him as a person. I hadn’t thought of it. I didn’t realise that he was actually quite sociable, and had a good sense of humour, and an appetite for life.
“I had this idea of Freud that maybe a lot of people have, that he was a very severe, rigid kind of old man. He could be very cutting, and he was very witty, but he could turn that wit on you in a very incisive, cruel way if he felt he was backed into a corner.
“But he was very funny and gregarious, and once I realised that he liked to have a good time, and enjoyed his cigars, his wine, his female and male company, and liked to exchange ideas, it became easier for me to play him.”
This is Mortensen’s third time working for Cronenberg after A History of Violence (2005) and Eastern Promises (2007), which earned the actor an Oscar nomination. There’s obviously something in the relationship that works well for both men.
“We became friends pretty early on, and we share a similar sense of humour. We have a similar work ethic too. He’s very relaxed on set and likes to joke around. He’s not a tyrant in any way.
“He’s very secure in himself as a person and as a director so he’s open to ideas from the crew and the cast. He’s not threatened. I feel good working with him and I know the results are going to be good.”
In that regard, Mortensen adds that his Irish co-star Fassbender fits right in on a Cronenberg set. “David is professional, but doesn’t take himself so seriously,” Mortensen explains. “After all, this is make-believe. It’s play. Michael is like that too. He’s able to go from 0 to 60 immediately. I think the fact that he’s been on a roll for a couple of years now, doing interesting parts, gave him a certain amount of self-confidence that helped him going in to work with David.”
Mortensen is also full of admiration for Knightley, who has come in for a fair amount of flak for her difficult, extremely physical performance. “Keira was very courageous,” he says. “I think she has been unfairly criticised by some for the risks she took, especially in the early part of the movie.
“I think it’s an extraordinary performance. For me, as I was watching it and then seeing the finished result, it’s reminiscent of the early years and first movies of Meryl Streep in terms of that kind of courage, emotional intensity, and intelligent character construction.”
That’s high praise indeed from the New York-born actor, who has been in the business for almost three decades. Mortensen spent 15 years working his way up to the A-list through parts in the likes of GI Jane, A Perfect Murder, and Gus Van Sant’s Psycho remake, before the three Lord of the Rings movies changed everything for him.
Since then, Mortensen has worked sparingly: there were the Cronenberg films, the western Appaloosa, and the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
But it’s not that he doesn’t keep busy. The quad-lingual Mortensen is something of a polymath: he’s also a musician and poet (in English and Spanish), as well as a photographer and painter who has staged exhibitions in Denmark, Iceland, the US and Cuba.
These artistic endeavours, he explains, are his ways of “interpreting what’s happening” around him, his preferred form of psychoanalysis, having undergone ‘the talking cure’ for a brief period 20 years ago.
“It’s like, ‘Life is going by, and it’s going to be over, and maybe I’m afraid it’s going to be over, and how the hell did I get here?’” he says.
“These artistic interests that I’m drawn to are about observing and remembering and having some record, be it photographs, paintings, poems, or movies. I can watch a movie I made, say, 10 years ago, and I remember what I was going through at the time. They’re kind of markers. It’s a way of trying to achieve some level of comfort with the inevitably uncomfortable fact that we decay and die.”
He lets out a laugh to lighten the tone. “You can mope about it, or you can try to make the most of it and learn stuff. I think it helps you be more well-rounded, and to get along with people, and get along with yourself, more importantly.”
But does he worry that people will just dismiss his eclectic works as mere half-arsed nixers of an over-indulged Hollywood star?
“I was drawing and painting and writing poems before I did acting, but people are going to make up their own minds about you anyway,” he replies. “I feel it’s personally a waste of time and inevitably a frustrating exercise to try to accommodate others all the time, or to try to please everyone.
“I’m aware of how after Lord of the Rings, and all that popularity, suddenly poetry readings or photo exhibits had to be in bigger venues because more people came. Plus I was aware of the fact that probably 90% of those people had never been to a poetry reading.
“But I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh you shallow idiots, what are you doing here?’. That would be really arrogant and self-defeating and disrespectful.
“What, am I going to be resentful of the fame from Lord of the Rings? No, it was a gift. It’s lucky that these things come your way. But then it’s about what you do with that luck.”
* A Dangerous Method is released on February 10
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