Viggo Mortensen is a man with many talents and roles. He is a movie star, photographer, poet, painter, American, Danish - and father. A man who doesn’t put on airs in spite of many eager fans.

Viggo Mortensen is a busy man. He is in Toronto to represent his latest movie, in which he plays the historical Spaniard Alatriste in the movie of the same name, and there are many journalists, photographers and fans there who would like to get their hands on Viggo Mortensen. Even so, he is quite calm.

“It comes with the job. If it wasn’t for my many fans, I wouldn’t be here,” says Viggo Mortensen, who is sitting in a corner of the outdoor lunch restaurant and has ordered a bottle of red wine and some light lunch dishes. He pours red wine into the glasses and leans back. He is a bit tired after a couple of late nights. “I am grateful. Even if it was not so funny yesterday night, when we were on our way home after a wonderful dinner and a crowd of fans wanted to take pictures of us. There are times when it becomes a bit too overwhelming. Sometimes I’m just happiest if I can be by myself.”

Viggo Mortensen does not have any airs. On the contrary, he is humble, easy and a genuinely warm man with a little shy smile on his lips, when you ask about his image as a sex symbol. He acts as if he doesn’t really understand it.

“If I really had a problem and didn’t feel comfortable about it, there isn’t anything I can do about it. People are interested in you for one reason or another. It is okay, as long as it is not the police. But I don’t think too much about it.”

Spanish actress Ariadna Gil agrees She has a love scene with Viggo Mortensen, and at the screening of “Alatriste”, she eagerly told how he just was the loveliest man to act with. Her girlfriends were jealous and constantly sent her text messages to hear how it went with Viggo.

“But the girls weren’t the worst,” says Viggo boyishly and looks like he also had a good time. He takes a bite of his lunch sausage and announces that he would like to have a good homemade fillet of fish.

Spanish or Danish
“Alatriste” was made in Spain. Viggo Mortensen doesn’t have roots in Spain, but he feels that he has much in common with the Spanish. He grew up in Argentina, where his American mother and Danish father lived on a farm, until he was 11 years old. His parents then divorced and his mother moved to New York.

“The Spanish and the Argentine culture are very similar: The way you treat your fellow human and the life style itself. People are not good at hiding their feelings, whether they are positive or negative. I am for example not a very good poker player: I always reveal, if I have good or bad cards in my hand. It is a culture, like a part of me, so it is very easy to settle down in Spain.”

Viggo Mortensen’s father is Danish, but it wasn’t until he was a teenager that Viggo went to Denmark and work for a while as truck driver. He speaks fluent Danish, but points out that he would have to freshen up his language and accent, if he were to make a Danish movie.

“I was nervous about speaking Spanish, because the Spanish accent is a bit different from the Argentinean one, and I wanted to have exactly the right pronunciation. I have not yet read a Danish manuscript that I could be a part of, but I want it very much and hope that it will happen some day”

There were 10 Danish movies at this year’s film festival in Ontario’s main capital, but Viggo didn’t have time to see any of them. He had a funny meeting with Mads Mikkelsen. That is to say - sort of.

“I was standing outside the toilet, when I heard a Danish voice say: ”Mads, Mads, come on,” Viggo Mortensen says, and the boyish grin covers his face. “It was a Danish guy, standing there and talking in a mobile phone with Mads Mikkelsen and trying to persuade him to come to the hotel, so I grabbed the phone and talked with him. I could hear he had a bad hangover. But he got quickly out the door.” He laughs and takes a sip of his red wine. “That you know too well yourself”

Multi artist and dad
Viggo Mortensen is known in Hollywood circles, to be a bit of an eccentric. It isn’t enough that he quotes intelligent men like Immanuel Kant, Walt Whitman and Joseph Campbell, he also runs around barefoot to press conferences, in the winter, in the middle of New York, drinks South American tea out of a bombilla, writes poetry, is a photographer and creates paintings that are really good. He is apparently not an object of juicy gossip and quite without a Hollywood ego.

“Other people often have a better picture of who I am. To know yourself is an ongoing process your whole life and you never get to that point. Joseph Campbell said that life was sorrowful. That we cannot change, but we can change our attitude to life. He only meant that we all get old and die.”

A movie project always means a lot to Viggo Mortensen, who engages himself completely. During the filming of “Hidalgo” he visited the Indians in South Dakota and took pictures of a Lakota ritual called “The Ghost Dance”, which the Indians danced after the massacre at Wounded Knee, that took place in 1890. The pictures were shown in the exhibition “Miyelo” at Stephen Cohen Gallery in West Hollywood in Autumn 2003 and were published in a book with the same title, at Mortensen’s own Perceval Press. He started the press with his partner Pilar Perez in 2002 with the goal to publish voices, which seldom get a hearing.

“I’m interested in other cultures, and I think to myself that other people are also interested in a different view and to hear untold stories or to see rare pictures”.

He does not distinguish between the actor, star, photographer, poet, painter, Dane, American and whatever else you could call him: “I’m pretty comfortable just being a human being. A human being, who doesn’t define himself as just one thing”.

Viggo Mortensen has a teenage son, Henry, from his marriage to the punk singer Exene Cervenca, and his responsibility as a father is another reason for his career choices. He wants to spend time with the son in his home in California.

“I want to spend time with my family, with Henry, and have peace. Time goes by, and the world and the people around you change, and you change as well. It’s nice to stop sometimes, or else I don’t get anything written or experience things that interest me.”

The role as a father is not difficult for Viggo Mortensen. He has often described his relationship with Henry as a good friendship rather than a father-son relationship.

“I have never met a child, who was as adaptable as him. He is taller and physically stronger than me, and he is a very calm and reasonable person. Often I wonder how he can be so calm. He is much more sociable and he is much more sure of himself than I was at his age. He is remarkable.”

He laugh again shyly, when the lunch is over, and a crowd of fans stands ready with paper, pens and cameras. He seems completely unperturbed by all the fuss around him. “Neither my ego nor my self-respect depends on this. If it goes away, I’ll honestly not be depressed,” he says.