Biography
Viggo Mortensen maintains his primary identity as an actor yet channels creative energy into additional fields such as painting and poetry. He was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1958 to a Danish father and an American mother. After his parents divorced in the late ’60s, Mortensen moved with his mother to Watertown, New York, and completed high school there. He later earned degrees in government and Spanish from St. Lawrence University, graduating in 1980, then lived for a period with his father’s relatives in Denmark before returning to the United States. In 1982 he enrolled in acting classes in New York City and subsequently relocated to Los Angeles. His stage work earned a Drama-logue Critic’s award for the performance he gave in the Coast Playhouse production of Bent. Mortensen made his screen debut in 1985 in Peter Weir’s Witness, which starred Harrison Ford. Two years afterward he married Exene Cervenka, the lead singer of the punk band X, and the couple had a son; they divorced in 1997. He continued to accumulate roles that grew more prominent and drew stronger critical notice, reaching a turning point with his 2001 portrayal of Lord Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. For his performance as a Russian gangster in David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises, Mortensen received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor in 2008. An accomplished poet, he has issued several spoken-word albums, among them Other Parade in 1999 and Time Waits for Everyone in 2008.
Albums