Viggo Mortensen is an American actor, poet, and musician who currently has an estimated net worth of $30 million. He was born in Lower East Side Manhattan, on October 20th, 1958. His father is Danish, while his American mother. His maternal grandfather was from Nova Scotia (Canada) and his maternal grandmother from New England (USA). The couple met in Norway, but they married in Holland at a Lutheran ceremony.
Although his father’s family was a cattle rancher in Denmark, his father went into business and, hoping to make a fortune, in 1960 he moved with his family (Viggo has two younger brothers) to South America. The family would travel between Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Venezuela, often spending the holidays back in Denmark, at the Mortensen family farm.
Studies.
The family settled finally in Argentina, where Mortensen lived until he was 11 years old, in the province of Chaco, Buenos Aires and Cordova. When he was 6 or 7 years old, Viggo began writing his first short stories. There he learned the Spanish language with a River Plate accent. After his parents’ divorce, he returned to New York with his mother and two brothers. He graduated there in Politics and Spanish at the University of Saint Lawrence in 1980.
After two years in which he lived in Denmark without having decided yet his professional career, he returned to Manhattan to finally study acting in the Warren Robertson’s Theater Workshop. He spent a few years at the theater, first in New York and later in Los Angeles, where thanks to his performance in Bent, he received the Dramalogue Critics’ Award.
Filmography.
He began his film career with his portrayal of an Amish farmer in the movie Witness (1985), where he appeared along with Harrison Ford. Thanks to this and to his following projects, He gained a place in the cinema world, that is how he could be seen in films such as The Indian Runner, directed and written by Sean Penn; Carlitos’ Way, directed by Brian de Palma, and Crimson Tide, directed by Tony Scott and starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman.
The Lord of the Rings.
It was not until 1997 that his breakthrough came when he received an offer from New Zealander Peter Jackson to work on the project that would change the fate of his professional career. Although Mortensen at first hesitated to accept the role of Aragorn in the film trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, his son, a faithful follower of J. R. R. Tolkien’s work, convinced him to participate in the project.
During the two years of filming, he became so involved with the character that he helped design the costume that he would wear in the film and took so much care of the horse with which he worked and rode in his free time, which ended up buying it. The world premiere of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on December 19, 2001 marked a before and after in the history of cinema and kept millions of viewers on the ground year after year until December 17, 2003 The last installment of the Tolkien’s trilogy was released.
Personal life.
Regarding his private life, he was married to Exene Cervenka, singer of the band punk X, with whom he had their son called Henry Blake in 1988. After the couple’s divorce, the custody of their only son was shared.
