The star of “The Lord of the Rings” and the recently released “Alatriste” radiated warmth on his trip to Chile. With a noticeable Argentine accent and carrying his maté, Mortensen had lunch at El Mercurio and spoke about soccer, about his controversial criticism of Almodóvar and about how to be humble in Hollywood.

Last Monday, as soon as he left the airplane that brought him to Chile from Mexico, Viggo Mortensen, the Hollywood star of “The Lord of the Rings”, realised that he should have been a better actor going through immigration. This is how he tells it, in perfect Spanish, hours after arriving, in the dining room at El Mercurio. “The customs agent looks at my American passport and asks me in tortured English how long I will be staying in Chile”, he says about one of the many vivid scenes at airports during the Latin American tour to promote his latest film “Alatriste”, the adaptation of novels by Arturo Perez-Reverte, which brought him for little more than a day to our country and which was released this week.

“Then I reply in Spanish to the agent”, Viggo continues with his story. The director of the film, Agustín Diaz Yanes, and his co-star, Ariadna Gil, are listening. “So..when I speak it comes out in an Argentine accent, and the agent is looking at me seriously... An Argentinean with an American passport? But everything changed when a companion said to him: “Hey, don’t worry, he’s the Lord of the Rings”. So then they gave me a warm ‘welcome to Chile’”. A Visa to cross any obstacle or border, Peter Jackson’s films, based on novels of Tolkien, have turned him into a global celebrity. Without limits.

Wearing hair-gel and a t-shirt from San Lorenzo de Almagro, the team of his heart, (Danish father and American mother, grew up in Buenos Aires), at 8:30 in the morning Viggo was in Santiago airport taking photos with the taxi drivers without problems. He delayed his departure to the hotel without any star temperament. Without the arrogance that could be expected of someone with a 25 year career in Hollywood, who has shared second billing with Al Pacino (“Carlito’s Way”) or Michael Douglas (“A Perfect Murder”) and who, without looking for it , has found fickle fame and still hasn’t lost it.

But he hasn’t become dizzy with fame. He’s a man of principles and from his operations centre, the independent publishing house Perceval, he publishes his own works (poetry, books of photographs, paintings), gives his opinion about whatever seems good to him (“art, the beauty of the things, you know”) and criticizes whatever seems bad to him (“the abuse of power, the war in Iraq, Bush”).

“Viggo is a complete artist”, states Diaz Yanes, the director of the most expensive Spanish film (45 million euros).

- Viggo, much has been said about your Spanish accent in “Alatriste”. Was it very difficult to achieve?

“Well, I was afraid to fail because he was Spanish-Spanish, of such a pure type, and I had to appear perfect. I was with the best actors of the cinema and the Spanish theatre and I felt an enormous responsibility. But, you know, I was comfortable. I learned Castilian and English at the same time, as a child, when I grew up in Buenos Aires. My brothers have said to me that when I speak Castilian I speak more loosely. When I speak English I take a bit more care. It has to do with the sound, with the language and that fits, for example, with the character of Alatriste: he is concise and that affects the way in which your body moves”.

Viggo has said that unlike Alatriste and his reserve when speaking, at times he says things without thinking about them too much. He’s an impulsive man, 48 years old, who caused a commotion when the Iberian press, which already considers him part of the Spanish star system, printed his criticisms of the untouchable Pedro Almodóvar for not attending the Goya Awards.

- Did that annoy you?

“I don’t think that Almodóvar has problems in making interesting things even if I or someone else has an opinion about what he does”.

Unassuming, humble, politically correct. Ariadna Gil, who is eating a piece of Chilean meat for her main course, speaks of the evenness with which Viggo treats everyone on the set. “He brought us delicious candies every day. You don’t expect that from a Hollywood star. What were those treats called, Viggo?” “Alfajores, Ari, alfajores”, says Viggo. “They are typical of Argentina and the truth is that I was surprised to find alfajores in Madrid when we filmed “Alatriste”. And it also scared me. During the preparation I realized that half of Madrid was Uruguayan or Argentine. I was running like in Edvard Munch’s painting, ‘The Scream’”.

- You wanted to keep the pure-blooded accent.

“Sure, and hearing Argentineans could contaminate me. In the film there was a boy on the team, Ariel, from Rosario, who also had a very, very strong accent. ‘Hey, Viggo, shall we have a maté?’, he said to me every day. I wrote to him. ‘We can have maté all you want, every day, but don’t talk to me until I tell you please, with all the respect in the world, because you’re scaring me.’”

Even when being serious, Viggo is pleasant, and the sort who doesn’t need public relations. “Viggo is terrifying”, contributes Agustín Diaz Yanes laughing, with a glass of red wine. “He sends a hand-written letter to you, everything decorated and painted and when he comes to your house for a meal, he’s intolerable: he cleans the fish, gathers all the plates. My wife is fascinated and compares us. Shit, what’s left for me. He has set the bar very high”.

After a meal, maté is sacred for Viggo. The brew is his best travelling companion and his only super-star requirement, is that there is hot water to make it. And that is not his only obsession: there is also soccer and the team of his heart, San Lorenzo. “This year the club is going to be 99 years old and has had a very good campaign”, he says.

- Have you managed to make Agustín and Ariadna become “crows” (followers of San Lorenzo) and drink maté?

Viggo, Ariadna and Agustín, between laughter and in unison, exclaim: “ We are crows until death”.

There is fiato in the trio headed by Mortensen, whose appearance (a mix of Danish and foreign) is deceptive, because he sounds just as Latin as his filming companions. He is straightforward and, according to the director, a great facilitator of the work. “Some so-called great stars doubt you and they call and they say “man, what’s happening?”. But Viggo got stuck in. He was the first to throw himself into cold water, into filthy mud, and the rest followed to him”.

And the most complicated scene, according to the producer, was one where Viggo could not move for two hours. “He is not like those silly buggers that get up and make a scene through their agent. We said to him, ‘can you stay fallen down until Ariadna is dressed?’, and it was two hours without complaining.”

- Viggo, it’s said that you are obsessive about researching your roles. Is that true?

“Generally if they give me a lot of time I do a lot of work, and if they give me little I do a lot of work. Here I introduced myself to the history of Spain, the history of the art. For example, I went to the Prado Museum, which I had often visited, but now I saw the pictures another way, looking for or reading Lope de Vega or Quevedo, looking for things that would be useful. I rang Tano (the director) at two in the morning and told him, I found this phrase by Góngora”. And Viggo makes a face, changes his voice and imitates Diaz Yanes: ” “Look, let’s see if I can explain to you. You are a pain!”. But not at all. And I found ithe characters in those pictures”.

Viggo has moved, in the recent years of his career, to films of various styles. But if you had to choose a sort of golden period, mention “A History of Violence”, the not-yet-released “Eastern Promises” (with Naomi Watts), both by the cult director David Cronenberg, and “Alatriste”, by “Tano” Diaz Yanes.

- How is to work with such different directors?

“It isn’t quite like that. It’s not that both directors work the same, but they resemble each other, Tano began later than Cronenberg. But in their point of view, in their way of treating people, they are very similar. They both met in Europe during the promotion of “A History of Violence” and was the funniest of scenes: they told scary jokes. I ate more than them because they did nothing but talk. And they told very strange things. But I believe that it does not matter that the film that you make is in Spain, with special effects or is shot in Canada. The directors set the example. That sort don’t fear the actors’ improvisation.”

- They are open-minded…

“Yes, they are mature as people and artists. They do not see it as a threat that someone in the cast has an idea, but neither are they embarrassed to tell us that such an opinion “is the most stupid you have had in the whole filming and that you should never say it again”. But they say it in a good way! (laughter)”.

- And did they say it to you often in “Alatriste”?

“Enough (and he again imitates the director). “You are the biggest pain I have ever known”. But seriously, I have to say that he and Cronenberg have been generous to me”.

“Now I’ve made a new English film and they have spoiled me so much in the last three, with Cronenberg and Tano, that I almost do not want to leave that, you know. I want to work with them, because I am going to be surrounded by good will and good people. I have made many films and this is something special. It scares me a bit, as if would be bad luck to leave (and he touches wood) these surroundings.”

- You are a painter, poet, photographer and actor. Do you think your artist’s vision after this will soak up the culture that was “Alatriste”?

“Look, I already admired Velázquez, was conscious of his inheritance. But thanks to the film I see him much more closely. If you make a film like this one, and if you go to sites and you put yourself in those places, you have to see everything with new eyes. It’s not about being only a little while. For that reason when actors say “It cost me soooooo much get rid of the character”, you know what I think? that they are wrong. I do not have any interest in forgetting anything. Neither the good nor the bad nor the easy nor the difficult. Everything I learned from Tano and the others and the character of Diego Alatriste I keep it like a treasure”.