Interview: Viggo Mortensen

Having reached the acme of his career as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, Viggo Mortensen has managed to maintain a steady plateau of success. Leeds Student’s Peter West talks to Viggo ahead of his new film A Dangerous Method, in which he plays the enigmatic psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud

They say Freud smoked about 22 cigars a day, but I probably smoked more during rehearsals

You’re an actor who likes to absorb himself in every role he plays – is it ever the case that there is too much information to absorb?

If you’re an actor who enjoys it, which I do, then you’ll always wish you had more time but at some point you just have to do it. I read not only books by Freud but books that describe what Freud was like – his ideas are important but his behaviour is equally so. There are a lot of descriptions of how he spoke, his posture, how he held his cigars, how he looked when he wrote – all these things were important. Of course, the internet is also a great help for actors.

Freud comes across as very witty in the film, but when most people think of Freud they think of a stern figure. Was this an aspect of his character that you particularly wanted to bring out?

When I was offered the part I thought ‘I don’t look like him, how am I ever going to look like him?’ Second of all I thought ‘How do you speak this much intellectual dialogue without it being flat, and how do you make that interesting?’ But as I started reading about him I realised he liked to make jokes, in fact he was quite funny – he even wrote a book about jokes. Supposedly, he met up with Mark Twain in Vienna and they smoked cigars and told jokes all day long. He spoke in very clear German, and often made humorous asides and woody observations and wasn’t worried if people heard them. In fact, it was a very English humour. That helped a lot, when I realised he had a good sense of humour and some fun, it made it easier for me to have some fun with it.

What is it that you like about working with director David Cronenberg?

Well, it’s fun. First and foremost he’s someone who has a persona. Freud was a very careful about how he photographed and it’s very rare you see a candid image of him. When he’s not aware he’s being photographed he’s a little looser but in almost all photographs he has this very stern, penetrating gaze and is very careful about how he presents himself – and Cronenberg is too. In reality David is serious but, like Freud, he has a sense of humour and I like that aspect of working with David. He never forgets no matter how serious or how intense the movie is, and how much pressure there is to get the day’s work done, to have a good time. He seems like he’s making his first movie, and just happens to have all this technical knowledge and experience under his belt. That’s contagious.

What do you think of the reaction to the film so far?

I’ve seen A Dangerous Method in different countries – France, Spain – and I don’t know whether it draws a particular crowd but the response has been uniformly good, people have really been discussing the ideas. I don’t think you have to know anything about psychoanalysis to enjoy this movie because it’s essentially about people who are interesting, intelligent and very ambitious to make their mark in their field but who are also very competitive, jealous and insecure, and who behave often as childishly as the people they are supposed to be helping and that makes it interesting. It’s a film that, really, any of us can relate to.

Freud is never without a cigar in the film, did you do a lot of research into cigars?

[Laughs] Yes, that was interesting and I’m getting used to smoking so many! [More laughs] He smoked 22 (a day) but I probably smoked many more. I’m not smoking them anymore, but I do like the smell – I have a lot of childhood memories associated with them. My grandfather was a farmer in Denmark who always had a cigar in his mouth. I can still smell what his clothes and his house smelt like.

Did Michael Fassbender have a similar approach to his role as you?

My understanding from hearing him speak in interviews and from talking to him is that he just worked on the rhythms of the script, he supposedly read the script hundreds and hundreds of times – he saw it as like music almost. I don’t think he did as much research all over the map. There really is no fixed approach to interpreting a role.

Click here for Peter West’s review of A Dangerous Method

Featured Image: Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud, by Liam Daniel, courtesy of Sony Pictures

Image 2: Michael Fassbender (left) as Carl Jung with Mortensen (right), Liam Daniel

Image 3: Mortensen and Fassbender, Liam Daniel