Viggo-Works - Viggo News

'The greatest traveller and huntsman in this age of the world' is how Gandalf described Aragorn. Viggo’s travels might not be quite as dangerous or arduous as Aragorn’s but he certainly gets about a bit. Jetting around the world has its own pitfalls with suspicious passport officers, different time zones and a succession of strange hotel rooms. So, how do you make yourself feel at home? How do manage to keep creating when you are hardly still? Most of all how do you stop your luggage being mistaken for modern art?

Where are you from?

At the moment I’m from here.

Viggo Mortensen - Man of the Week
By Einar Falur - translated by Ragga
30 May 2008
Source: Morgunblaðið

There's a UN patch on his sweatshirt and if you ask him where he's based, he says, hippyishly, "Planet Earth, mostly."

By Harriet Lane
The Guardian
February 22, 2008

'I have travelled a lot my entire life. As a child I lived in five-six different countries - from Denmark to USA, from Argentine to Egypt - and as a grown up I have travelled half around the globe myself. The movie business is a very vagrant business.’

Viggo Mortensen
Viggo from Hollywood
by Poul Hoi
M/S (Danish magazine), 2001

Viggo Mortensen loves rituals. He never changes his habits, no matter where he goes. For example, he enters the villa in Deauville – made available by the French top jeweller Cartier – in bare feet, as if he is in his own living room.

In his right hand, he is holding a cup with his favorite beverage: maté – an herbal drink from Argentina, the country where he spent the majority of his childhood. He also remembered to bring a silver straw, the bombilla.

The actor explains why he always behaves the same way, no matter where he is in the world. “In this business you’re travelling half the time. Sometimes I feel like a world traveller who doesn’t know where he’ll sleep the next day. I am exaggerating a little, but I do value my habits, so I can quickly feel at home. If I don’t, it takes me too long to adapt to strange surroundings. That’s very important for an actor. That way he can more quickly concentrate on his role."

Viggo Mortensen Goes To Bed With A Shotgun
By - translated by Airwin
Algemeen Dagblad
27 April 2009

Viggo Mortensen's temporary headquarters during the Toronto Film Festival were bare except for one corner, where there was a sculpture assembled from a plastic grocery-store bag draped over a tripod.....While Mortensen used the restroom, I tried to decide if the bag-on-tripod sculpture was a comment on our throwaway culture or a meditation on the relationship between art and reality. Turns out it was his luggage.

"Want to see my luggage?" Mortensen asked, emerging from his hand-washing and following my gaze to the "sculpture." "Let's see what's in here," he added, removing underwear, several T-shirts - one with fishing records on it, another emblazoned with "Bring Our Troops Home" - and a United Nations flag from the bag. "I travel light."

Renaissance man jousts with career-changing role
by Chris Hewitt,
Twin Cities
28 September 2005

The typical Hollywood leading man travels with an entourage between his palatial homes, five-star hotel suites and luxury trailers. He does not disappear alone for two weeks to meet the Russian mafia in the name of research.

Actor joins the underworld's shadowy cast
Ben Hoyle
The Times
October 17, 2007

'I have to tell you...what an awful combination it is to have a US passport and a Buenos Aires accent when you arrive at the Chile airport. A pretty long delay… my friends that had Spanish passports had already gone through (customs), and they were waiting… and the guy kept checking, very kindly, but he wasn’t letting me go anywhere, and he talks to me in a pretty tortured English, and so I tell him: “I speak Spanish, you can talk to me in Spanish”. And so he gave me a long look, and then I realized I had f***** up, really, because the combination of the accent and the passport… I was going straight to jail, or so it looked. And so another customs officer comes and says, “No, no, he is the Lord of the Rings”, and so...“Welcome to Chile” and (pam, pam – sound of passport getting stamped) “Here you go…go ahead”'.

Viggo on Radio Cooperativa, Chile
By - transcribed/translated by Graciela
Radio Cooperativa
27 March 2007

"He is so kind and playful and funny off set. He's almost like a hippie. We picked him up at the airport one time, and he wasn't wearing shoes. I still have no idea how he got through the airport barefoot."

Fran Walsh
On 'The Road' And Off, Viggo Mortensen Walks The Walk
By Scott Bowles
USA Today
3 December 2009

He… presents me with two large chocolate squares, one wrapped in pink paper that has a handwritten “Venezuela” on it, and another in orange paper that has a handwritten “Indonesia”.

I am not sure whether he handwrapped them himself or whether they came from a hand-wrapped chocolate shop. I imagine him travelling the world with a suitcase of wrapped chocolates.

Sympathy for the devil
By Chrissy Iley
The Observer
19 April 2009

'You know, they have nice beds in this hotel. It's a nice change once in a while. Just like TV. I don't watch TV at home, but when I come to the hotel, it's like, all these pillows and TV! And it's like, this is great! God, why didn't I do this before, but every time, it lasts about 15 minutes before I get bored and switch off the TV.'

Viggo Mortensen
A Sense of Finality
by Markus Tschiedert
Green Cine, 2003

'As an individual, I try to take care of the places I go to whether it's where I live or hide. It's a cliche, but leave the place looking better than you found it---pack it in and pack it out. I try to do that-always.'

Viggo Mortensen
A Visit With Viggo
by Marianne Love
Sandpoint magazine, 2004

The following morning he flew towards Buenos Aires. At night, he left for the USA; he had to start working on the character of his next movie. “I’ll come back,” he said before taking the airport escalator. I began to lose sight of him. He had a bombilla in his back pocket, a white plastic bag, and a San Lorenzo flag wrapped around his shoulders.

A Trip With Viggo Mortensen Through The Heart Of The Province
By Robustiano Pinedo - translated by Graciela
El Tribuno Salta
14 May 2007

“If you're going to prepare your role as an actor or as a director properly that takes quite a lot of time and focus and energy.....But you know, I manage to get off a few pictures, take a few pictures, write a few things down late at night in hotel rooms as I bounce around the world.”

Viggo Mortensen
Air America Radio Interview
Transcribed for V-W by Zooey
12 September 2007

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