The star of “The Lord of the Rings” arrived in Buenos Aires to promote ‘Alatriste’, the Spanish blockbuster that is released next Thursday. And, like a good fan, before elaborating on his work, his sources of inspiration and his favourite directors… he spoke about San Lorenzo, his favourite team.

Apologies to all those who are fed up of reading about the fanaticism of Viggo Mortensen for San Lorenzo de Almagro, but really in his presence there is no way to avoid the subject (unless you interview him with sight unseen or you’re a hopeless supporter of Huracán). In the room in the 5-star hotel where the interview will be, the actor arrives dressed in an impeccable blue suit, an impeccable shirt in Barcelona stripes, an impeccable coat with a badge of the Boedo (San Lorenzo) club on the lapel and, on his wrist, a matching bracelet. Anything else? Yes: in order to complete the picture, on the table there is a little jar (you can guess what emblem is on it) improvised for maté. The first thing Mortensen says is “since you’re from Clarin, thank you very much for yesterday’s lovely note,” and he takes out of his pocket Tuesday’s sports pages, with the interview with ‘La Gata’ Fernandez, one of the members of the unbeaten San Lorenzo team. “It’s lovely: as you know, we’re not used to being in the news. But the players talk too much and last year it happened that later Boca put seven past us. We have to be a bit careful.”

Everything is said in perfect Buenosairean: even the unaware should know that Mortensen spent his childhood in Argentina, and since then he spreads the holy cause of San Lorenzo everywhere: “I am like the friars who went to the jungle to convert the savages”, he jokes. Or not quite: he arrived in the country at midnight on Tuesday and the first thing he did yesterday was to get up early to go to a merchandising business to obtain t-shirts of all sizes and periods to present to Ariadna Gil and her children (you should have seen the look of incredulity from the Catalan actress while Father Viggo was taking out packages and explaining to them: “This is the one the ‘Matadors’ used, this one is from the time of the ‘Carasucias’, the team that Bambino Veira played for...”)

He is here promoting Alatriste, the Spanish blockbuster based on the series of novels by Arturo Perez Reverte, which is released next Thursday. But once the subject of soccer is exhausted, first thing he talks about is his publishing company, Perceval Press, the last books it published and the next ones it plans to publish; it’s an enterprise that he finances with his film work and that grew – like his fame – since he played Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Mortensen also takes photos, paints, writes poetry and plays music with his band.

Do you take an interest in cinema as an economic support for your other activities?

For me they are branches of the same tree, so I don’t look down on film making. It frustrates me when it doesn’t come out well, but I must say that in the last three years I feel proud of what I have done. I already made two films with David Cronenberg (A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, not yet released) and Alatriste with Tano (Agustín Diaz Yanes). I really like their way of working. They are very smart, they have a good sense of humour, with one very analytical side and another zen side: they are not closed off and they don’t feel threatened if somebody comes up with a strange idea or does something unexpected. There are qualified directors very who can’t deal with that, who get angry or nervous. Those two, however, welcome new ideas, because they know that if they’re useful they’ll pinch them. And if they’re not any good they have no objection to saying that it seems like a stupid idea to them. That’s relaxing; now I’m almost afraid to work with other directors.

Is it true that your preparation for Alastriste included seeing pictures by Velasquez?

The film is set in the 17th Century, the Golden Age of Spain; apart from the little learned in school, in the Anglo-Saxon world nothing of that time is known. For that reason I was interested go back and read texts by Quevedo, Lope de Vega, Calderón, and to see pictures by Velasquez. Instead of going like a tourist to the Prado Museum and other sites where I have been before, I went looking, asking myself where Alatriste and his companions were. And the photography in the film is like a series of pictures by Velasquez. There isn’t too much light, like in Hollywood blockbusters.

What other differences are there between working in an European blockbuster and a Hollywood one?

The atmosphere is created by the director, whether it’s an enormous film or not. I have made small films where, because of insecurity, the director created a tense atmosphere. Here we had a good time, like a family. But that doesn’t depend on the language or the culture, but on the director.

This is the second film in which your character speaks only Spanish. Is there a difference between acting in Spanish and English?

I am sure that I move and look different when I speak Castilian than when I speak English. My character, my bearing, is different. Here, also, I had to change the Buenosairean accent to a Spanish one. In the books I read that Alatriste was a man of few words and few friends. And travelling through Spain I came across a place in Leon, in the mountains, where you went into a bar and everyone stopped talking. It was like a western. Then it occurred to me that Alatriste could have that accent, and I asked Perez Reverte and he told me yes, that was perfect. So I used that accent, which gives another personality to the character.

You are an activist against the war in Iraq, and recently you compared the Alatriste’s situation with that of the American soldiers there. How so?

That arose from a question, but I didn’t do the film thinking about that. In a film one always makes connections with one’s life, and in this case you can see a parallel: at one time Alatriste says that to be in Flanders is “to be in a strange land, populated by strange people who hate us”. If you think about Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq, is the same. At that time, Spain was an empire in decay, just as the United States is now, although it doesn’t have the painters or the poets that the Spanish had.

Alatriste is a very skilled swordsman, just like Aragorn. Are you afraid that that people will compare the two characters?

No, not at all. Alatriste doesn’t always behave nobly and he gets angry. In addition, he loses much and from time to time he wins… Like San Lorenzo.