succeeded in the early 2000s Viggo Mortensen finally made the leap from in-demand actor to global superstar. The reason for this was his role as Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy, through which everyone suddenly knew the face of the Danish-American actor – who nevertheless preferred to appear in selected smaller projects in the future then a major blockbuster career force.
In the years following the three-part fantasy opus, Mortensen appeared in three films by body horror master David Cronenberg (most recently ‘Crimes Of The Future’) and appeared in two experimental films by Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso (‘Jauja’) and received three Oscar nominations for Best Actor, including for Peter Farelly’s tragicomedy “Green Book.”
Viggo Mortensen started his film career with a true director legend
But when and how did Mortensen’s career actually start? The 64-year-old landed his first film roles in the mid-80s, where he was cut from two high-profile films (“Jonathan Demme’s Swing Shift” and Woody Allen’s “The Purple Rose Of Cairo”).
However, another director let him in: Peter Weir, who directed such classics as ‘Dead Poets Society’ and ‘The Truman Show’ – and ‘The Only Witness’ (1985), in which Harrison Ford played detective John Book Invest in an Amish community .
One of the members of the religious community is played by a young Viggo Mortensen, as seen in this photo:
Mortensen only has a handful of scenes in the film, and you don’t hear him speak more than three or four lines of dialogue. But not every actor can claim to have made his film debut alongside an actor considered perhaps the biggest star of his time – in a masterpiece from a true directing legend that was nominated for two Oscars.
The film is currently included in the Paramount+ Channel subscription on Amazon Prime Video:
After that, Mortensen appeared in TV series (“Miami Vice”) and sometimes more (“Prison – Return from Hell”) and sometimes less (“Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3”) successful B-movies before appearing in the In the 90s he with great directors like Brian De Palma (“Carlito’s Way”), Tony Scott (“Crimson Tide”) and Jane Campion (“Portrait of a Lady”).