You might think that after ‘Lord of the Rings,’ Viggo Mortensen would be set up for a lifetime of predictable, heroic turns. But for the guy who plays a ruthless Russian killer in David Cronenberg’s new film, and who recently drove around visiting every death camp in Poland, and who believes ‘Happy Gilmore’ may be the most flawless film ever made, life in anything but predictable.

Toward the end of a very long day, after a very long week, Viggo Mortensen is padding around the hotel room he’s been living in for the past six weeks. The place is clean but fantastically cluttered. Everywhere you look, there is something documenting or dissecting the catastrophe of early twentieth-century Germany. The centre of attraction is a round wooden table so dense with books and notes that hardly a square inch of surface peeks through. There are postcards recently purchased from World War II concentration camps; CDs with the music of Mahler, Strauss and Weill; and a fury of Proust and Kafka, cached between which are more modern tomes about anti-Semitism and cumbersome histories grappling with the rise of Hitler. And near the middle of it all, spiking up from the literary rubble all over the tabletop is an antique silver fountain pen accompanied by a lovingly etched fox-head inkwell. It’s a Ph.D. in German history, stacked on a single round piece of oak.

Yet this is not Germany. This is actually Hungary, which is portraying Germany in the movie Viggo is here to film – Vincente Amorim’s Good, which tells the story of a German literature professor whose novel about compassionate euthanasia is gradually twisted into propaganda for the darkest intentions of the Nazis. To complicate things, though, Viggo is now rubbing his brow with both hands, as if trying to push his mind back a year or so to a time when he was Russian – or, rather, playing a Russian criminal living in the violent subculture of London – in David Cronenberg’s newest film, Eastern Promises, which will open later this month.

Many of Viggo’s best stories are in some way connected to how he prepares (some would say fiercely overprepares) for his films. He is a monster for research. As Nikolai, the Russian gangster, he was obliged to be covered head-to-toe in tattoos – since, in that culture, tattoos tell your life story: where you’ve served time in prison, what crimes you’ve committed. As one character sums it up in the film: “Without tattoos, you don’t exist.”

“I was in London, at a pub,” Viggo says, laughing and shaking his head regretfully. “There were many times when I wouldn’t wash off the tattoos from one day to the next, since it saved the makeup people a lot of time. If I had my shirt rolled up, you could see a lot – and of course my finger tattoos were very visible. And they were very accurate. I’d done the research to make sure they were correct. I found the people who knew!” he says. “So I was sitting there, and two people behind me were having a conversation in Russian – a very agitated talk. I didn’t know enough to get exactly what they were talking about, but I was listening to the rhythms of their speech.”

Suddenly, the two Russians just stopped cold. Something dropped to the floor, and they were just staring at Viggo. “I realised, they think I’m a Russian criminal who has followed them here and is eavesdropping, which I was!” he says, freshly appalled. “And I thought, Oh God – the Litvinenko thing just happened. I’ll get up and leave! Which I did, immediately.

“But that was even worse,” he continues. “Now I’d confirmed their worst fears, because I left as soon as I saw them looking at me. The poor bastards! Finally, some guy asked, ‘Are...are they real?’ I said, ‘No!’ And there was a relieved cry of Aaaahhh, all right! It made me feel that it was gonna be okay, I’d be fine.”

Viggo Mortensen’s success as an actor stems in part from the fact that he is a born watcher, one of those people who move through life with an air of heavy quiet. He’s one of those actors whose body of work is surprising, not least because, at 48, he hasn’t radically changed in appearance in all that time. But consider a partial list: The Indian Runner, Crimson Tide, The Portrait of a Lady, A Perfect Murder, A Walk on the Moon, 28 Days, Hidalgo, A History of Violence – to say nothing of the work that ‘introduced’ us to his talents, the role of Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It was never particularly supposed to work out this way. Viggo Mortensen was born in Manhattan to a Danish father and an American mother. His childhood was spent mainly in Argentina but with a healthy dose of travel. After his parents divorced, when Viggo was 11, he found himself in upstate New York and ended up graduating from St. Lawrence University with a double major in government and Spanish literature. Escaping to neutral territory in Denmark, he then worked an addling array of jobs. He lived as a waiter, a bartender, a longshoreman. He delivered flour to bakers all over the country. He sold flowers in the street. “That was a great job!” he says. “It was very early in the morning – but it was great to be in the street.”

And, as it seems with every movie actor, Viggo has had his greedy share of bizarre injuries in his past. That famous scar under his nose, for example, was earned in college: “It was Halloween – and I was doing my best attempt at copying David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane makeup.”

“Yeah, that’d be a good look for you.”

“At the time,” he says. “Now I would look really sad. Well, I probably did then too.”

The upshot was some kind of drunken scuffle. Viggo is hazy on the details, and for obvious reasons – his face ended up shoved into barbed wire.

“Isn’t that what your character did to Ed Harris in A History of Violence?”

“Yes – I told David that,” he says, brightening. “But it was all coincidence, it was already in the script.”

He has also broken both legs a number of times. Asked to enumerate, he adopts his usual combination of specificity and vagueness: “I’ve broken them both skiing, playing soccer, in industrial accidents...”

“’Industrial accidents.’ Be more generic!”

“Oh, I dropped a bunch of lead bars on my foot in a smelting plant,” he explains. This seems to be vintage Viggo Mortensen. Ask a question and suddenly he’s talking about an entirely different job he had, in a country he hasn’t mentioned before. He’s a cross between Dorian Grey and Lord Jim. A discussion of, say, the Godfather movies reminds him of another job he once loved. “Oh – I was working at the old Thalia movie theatre on 95th Street in New York,” he says. “Is that still there? I sold tickets and popcorn. It was great. Got held up twice, though.”

He seems awfully casual about it. I ask, “Has that happened to you other times?”

Viggo needs to search his memory. “Hmm. Got stabbed once,” he says.

“Stabbed?”

“Like this” – here, he makes a little sticking gesture with his right hand.

“No, I know what ‘stabbed’ is. How did it happen?”

“I was in New York, walking home at about ten at night,” he recalls. “This guy came around the corner, screaming. I moved sideways and fell to the ground. He got me in the shoulder, then just kept on running, screaming his head off. A fucking loony.”

“Did you call the police?”

“What was I gonna do? I told my girlfriend at the time. She thought I was making it up.”

“Wow,” I reply. “What does that say about you? You tell her you were stabbed and she doesn’t believe you.”

Viggo wryly does his impression of the outraged lover: “Nahhh – you’re a half hour late! You’re always a half hour late!”

Very early in his film career, Viggo met Exene Cervenka, lead singer of the famed punk band X, and married her. The two had a son, Henry, now 19. And though Viggo and Exene separated after four years, the breakup has been on sufficiently good terms that they raised the boy together. (Perceval Press, which he cofounded and which publishes his very legitimate books of prose and photography, even published a volume of Cervenka’s artwork last year.)

Strangely, Viggo speaks of all his old lives – as actor, trucker, poet, dock worker – on the same level, as if one is fundamentally no different from another. Sitting in the room, I can just as easily picture him working with his fountain pen (over and over, until part of him has owned it all his life) as I can imagine him working a Danish pulley system to raise a sack of flour into a baker’s loft. The balance of it all – the sense that preparation is preparation – has grounded him. Coupled with a life of travel, it has made him a little foreign everywhere, and everywhere at home.

To the outsider, his efforts toward preparing for a role might seem nothing short of maniacal. On-set, one might have little doubt that actors who prefer to wing it would regard him as somewhere between daunting and unbearable.

For Eastern Promises, Viggo went to his usual sensible extremes. He reread all his Russian poetry, which is to be expected. He sought out Russian underworld types not only to get the tattoos right “but also I wanted to feel that if a Russian saw the movie, that they wouldn’t say what they always do – that every time an American does a movie about Russians, the accent is a joke.

“So I went to Russia and taped a lot of people. I rode the trains. Went to the Urals, where the character is from. People from the Urals are typically very resilient. They expect the worst. I remember someone was asked after the supposed fall of Communism how things had changed, and the guy said, “We hoped for the best...but it turned out as always.” They’re a very fatalistic people. They’re big shruggers!”

“And you went alone,” I point out, noting that, in the psychological realm of Hollywoodland, this simply isn’t done. “Yuou don’t even have a personal assistant. What kind of celebrity are you?”

“Well, everyone has his own way,” he says equably. “I’m sure David Cronenberg thought I was insane to go to Russia. But if it makes me happy, why not? I’m sure the director of Good thought I was insane to go to every concentration camp in Poland. But it was interesting.”

“Did you really do that?” I ask.

“Well, every one I could find,” he says. “I drove to where some were supposed to be, but they weren’t there. Then off to Germany. Munich, of course. Driving around listening to Mahler everywhere.”

Obsessive or no, Viggo’s preparation works. As Nikolai in Eastern Promises, his bearing is of a man who’s both perpetually ready for violence and ambivalent about it. He’s impeccably coiffed, but there is a genuinely terrible isolation about the man, who at one point sets about disposing of a frozen corpse, first by using a blow dryer to thaw it out a bit, then by methodically eradicating the body’s identity. Before starting, he turns to the most squeamish man present and calmly says, in his thick accent, “Now I’m going to do his teeth and cut off his fingers. You might want to leave room.”

True to Cronenberg’s recent work (as with A History of Violence), it’s unfair to describe Eastern Promises in too much detail, because there are spoilers practically in the first few minutes. Still, it might well be Cronenberg’s – and Viggo’s – finest work to date. The spoiler most certain to be spoiled before Eastern Promises’s release (though not in these pages) is, suffice it to say, a fight. The scene is so viscerally brutal that even Viggo wonders aloud if it will “take people out of the movie,” while adding that “it probably is, at some level, everyone’s worst nightmare.”

The conventional wisdom on Viggo Mortensen is that, after so many impressive roles, it was The Lord of the Rings, and his regal, iconic performance, that would at long last catapult him into the splash-fabulous, household-name stardom he deserved. Yet it didn’t seem to work out that way.

Of all the movies we discuss, the trilogy rarely comes up. Maybe he’s talked about it too many hundreds of times, or maybe his last two films with Cronenberg are more my line of country. In any case, after a while I make a point to get into it.

“After Lord of the Rings, you had your choice of anything,” I suggest. “You could have parlayed that into...well, into a genuinely crass career.”

“I’m halfway!” he says. “I’m a coward.”

He doesn’t mean a word of this. To his way of thinking, he has beautifully parlayed the success of that trilogy. “Everyone in the main roles has had a time now when they could get huge roles,” he says. “I would never have met David Cronenberg had it not been for Lord of the Rings. I would not have been able to make my last five movies. Not even the Spanish movie, even though I speak Spanish and look right. No matter how much the director might have wanted me for the part.”

That’s his idea of cashing in, apparently. How many other actors would feel lucky, after having been the emblem of Peter Jackson’s epic money machine, to have scored the lead in Alatriste, a Spanish-language film about a heroic mercenary from seventeenth-century imperial wars?

Not that Viggo has an allergy to blockbusters. He and his son have a history of attending all the Hollywood Bigs, always on opening nights. It’s one of Viggo’s rituals to go buy the tickets himself, in advance.

We get to talking about his son’s reaction when the two saw Titanic on opening day. “We saw it at Mann’s,” Viggo recalls. “It was a huge thing. At the end, it was like the Nuremberg Rally. Everyone stood up; they’re crying and clapping. Henry sat there scowling. He said, ‘It should’ve been about the boat – not the stupid people!’”

He pauses, hearing that critique in mental playback. “James Cameron’s not going to call me after this article, is he?” Viggo says, before tacking on a fake disclaimer. “It wasn’t Cameron’s fault! Shit happens!”

Still, Viggo and Henry never miss the big ones: Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, whatever’s loudest. And always the Will Ferrell movies. He also has some sort of quasi obsession with Adam Sandler.

“Happy Gilmore, of course, is flawless from start to finish,” he says, utterly serious. “It’s a classic. The grandmother’s performance is genius. Truly a heartbreaking performance.”

Alas, for every Adam Sandler triumph, there is an atrocity in this world. The lead character of Good – whose devolution into Nazism begins with the best intentions – strikes Viggo as an extraordinarily modern persona.

“There are so many parallels with the movie we’re shooting and right now,” he says. “People must ask themselves, ‘Could I conceivably give up a certain amount of civil liberties? Could I go down that path?’”

“Civil liberties?” I say with a shrug, goading him. “Those are boring. Hey, if I can’t show absolutely everything I’m doing to the government...”

“Then you’ve got bad secrets,” he says.

“So do you have a candidate in mind for next year? Osama?”

“It’s all such a circus act, especially seen from a distance. I don’t think even if you had the perfect candidate, someone putting the country first...”

“Like who? Bobby Kennedy?”

“Well, I think he was in his way corrupt and mean-spirited.... But let’s say you have a very good candidate, a civic-minded leader. It’s still gonna take generations...This administration has undone so much. Not unlike the Germans in the 1930s. Civil liberties, the environment, replacing all the judges – and not just the federal ones. It’s been a grassroots thing. Which is what the Nazis did. Cheney’s behaviour about not letting people have access is very Nazi.”

“Any feelings about Hillary Clinton?”

“Corporate.”

“And a third party?”

There could be twelve parties, but until they change the rules – until they make it more like Canada and Europe, with a day when election spending starts and another when it ends – nothing will work. Because you can buy it.

“The United States is very like the movie business,” he adds. “The day after the Oscars, Entertainment Weekly puts out its list of next year’s probable Oscar picks! They do it before they’ve seen the movies.”

“Do you have any interest in the Oscars?” I ask.

“I always think of the Churchill quote.”

“Telling the lady that he’ll be sober in the morning but that she’d still be ugly?”

“Yeah, well, he wasn’t.”

“Wow. Insulting both Bobby Kennedy and Winston Churchill.”

“Churchill was responsible for bombing Iraqi civilians in the 1920s,” he says, showing some heat. “And for testing aerial bombing, and chemical warfare. But I meant the quote about never seeking medals...I’ve never been nominated, so what the fuck would I go for? Anyone with a brain knows that so many worthy things get left out. Awards are on one level a history of injustice – but if you want to have a sense of humour about it, you could say they’re also a history of funny outfits and inappropriate speeches.”

Late sunlight is playing tricks with Viggo’s Gesamtkunstwerk [according to my dictionary ‘synthesis of the arts’ – Obs] table – refracting through a red vase on the sill to throw a splash of blood on the books. Viggo walks over to a high shelf and pulls down a bottle of Hungarian Cabernet Sauvignon, explaining in a jolly voice, “this is why I’m wearing a red shirt! Drink red, wear red.

“Would you like a Snickers bar?” he adds. Chocolate seems to be his real passion. He has been in Budapest long enough to have found what he believes to be “one of the best chocolate stores in the world” about three blocks away.

Suddenly, there is a clumsy sound at the door; Viggo strolls over just as a maid is letting herself in, but the woman isn’t accustomed to seeing him here. She lets out a yelp, but Viggo is already laughing mischievously. “You’re drunk, aren’t you?” he teases her, very gently, not entirely sure she understands. She doesn’t seem to and lets herself out, stepping backwards as it she’s trying to leave only a single set of footprints in show, all the while giggling like a schoolgirl.

Before long, the window, and the Danube beyond it, and the Royal Palace beyond the river, have all somehow gone dark. Dinner-cruise boats are plodding left-to-right along the river, and directly below, on the promenade, the police and the aging hookers are engaged in their halfhearted nightly confrontations.

But we’re both looking up at the hotel wall next to us. Repelled by a truly awful pink painting, Viggo has unceremoniously covered it with a photograph of thousands of shoes – a grim icon of one of the death camps. It’s striking how many of his metaphors these days fall to the Third Reich. Something in the Bush administration sparks a reference to Kristallnacht. Standing ovations at Mann’s Theatre now remind him of the Nuremberg Rally, which in turn causes him to blurt out a callback to our chat about the futility of awards: “Hey – Leni Riefenstahl never won an Oscar!”

Later, as we stare into the table’s 1930s wilderness, Viggo reaches over and, holding something out, cheerfully asks, “Want a postcard from Treblinka?”

Minutes after that, out of nowhere, he asks, “Is it late?” He wants to hit his favourite chocolate shop, and the place closes at 10 p.m. So we agree to head out; he’s going to walk me to a restaurant he likes, then veer over for his chocolate fix.

I run to my room to drop off my tapes, and the phone is already ringing. It’s Viggo, and he sounds the slightest bit rattled. It is after 10 p.m. Instead of the two and a half hours we’d planned to talk, I’ve been up there for nearly six. It’s too late. So that’s that; I switch on the hotel TV, which is abysmal in seven languages, and watch, of all movies, Witness, his first film, in German.

Next morning, there’s a letter under my door. It’s friendly, I guess, but there is also a peevish undertone. Six hours! Now he’s had no time to prepare for his early call! Still, he writes, we could get together in a few nights. He seems concerned that he’s said a lot of things that are “not relevant.”

A day later, I’ll find another letter spun under my door. This one is very different from the other. This one isn’t a greeting or a harried message about scheduling. At the top is my full name. Next comes a proclamation, in overthick script: JUST BACK FROM WORK. Viggo has started using his props from Good again. This missive is on the hotel’s notepaper – but obviously has been written with the German professor’s fountain pen. Large blotches have soaked through everywhere.It looks like a bureaucratic Ralph Steadman has written this.

Viggo is still concerned about how he has come across in out marathon – in fact, now he has decided that “a lot of it was probably drivel.” He suggests getting together again later to talk it over. But the handwriting seems to suggest the opposite. Half of me knows I won’t be bumping into him here again, that he has become German again.