Viggo Mortensen tells us if there's one director he's comfortable being naked in front of, it's David Cronenberg. We're of course talking about their work on screen in the Golden Globe-nominated thriller "Eastern Promises," for which Viggo is also up for best-lead-actor honors. In the film, being released on DVD Sunday (Dec. 23), Viggo performs a most memorable fight scene in the nude.

"I knew at first it would feel a little weird in front of the crew naked, flopping around the floor, but once we got going, I was sort of in it, and we were just trying to get it right," says the actor, who plays a Russian mobster. "It wasn't that bad. I trusted the director implicitly. If it had been another director, I might have been a little more concerned," he notes about Cronenberg, who also filmed him in "A History of Violence."

"I liked the way he shot it. It wasn't gratuitous. We were in a steam bath, so you don't have on any clothes. He didn't try to get fancy. He was pretty wide on a lot of shots. You saw what was really going on, which is a guy getting his a-- kicked."

As mentioned in the DVD's bonus features, Viggo also got the chance to explore his character in other ways. "I traveled to Russia and was like a fly on the wall. I took a lot of public transportation and walked many miles on the streets and through the villages just to see regular people. I went to the places my character was from," he explains. "Yeah, there were some places and people that seemed a little sketchy, but I'm used to traveling and looking out for myself, so I stayed out of trouble."