The actor Viggo Mortensen played supporting parts until, in his early forties, he found fame as Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, a heroic role which he made his own with his chiselled, Nordic looks, gaunt physique and magnetic presence. David Cronenberg then cast him as the lead in three of his thrillers, beginning with the tremendous comic-book adaptation A History of Violence (2005), in which he plays a loving family man, Tom Stall, who reverts to being a savage killer, Crazy Joey, when the false identity he has maintained for 20 years is blown. It’s his best role, Cronenberg divining how just well Mortensen could hold together such opposites – a duality evident to good effect in his role as the stoic Father in 2009’s The Road as well.
Mortensen himself is keenly creative, practising multiple arts. He is a poet, photographer, painter, publisher, musician and composer, as well as being politically active. In 2020, he wrote, directed, produced and scored, as well as starred in, his first wholly authored feature film, Falling , about a middle-aged gay man whose homophobic father moves in with him after developing dementia.
Now here’s his second, The Dead Don’t Hurt , an updated Western, set in the 1860s, filmed mainly in Mexico. As it turns out, you can update a horse and cart – but only so far. Mortensen, now 65, again plays the male lead (not his plan for either of these films, he says, but the only way to get them financed).
Its star, though, is the gre.
