CityLife

Interview: Viggo Mortensen

Viggo Mortensen

VIGGO Mortensen looks tired and a little shabby, casually dressed with long, unwashed hair, clutching a woven wool bag on the table in front of him.

He looks only slightly healthier than his character, The Father, in his new film The Road, and in his current state it is easy to believe the rumours that he lived on the street to get into the mindset of homeless people for the role.

The intense method actor actually only spoke to and studied the homeless, but he lost a dramatic amount of weight to play the ill, unkempt, unwashed man in John Hillcoat’s film based on Cormac McCarthy’s incredible post-apocalyptic novel.

The 51-year-old (right) is renowned for getting inside his characters, often carrying an object that he feels represents them on his person all the time he is on set. But The Father in The Road has lost everything, except hope.

Mortensen is dismissive of the diet he went on for the movie. “Yeah, you know there were certain things [I needed to change] externally – obviously I couldn’t look extremely well-fed. So I lost some weight, ate less, was more careful about what I ate and so forth,” he says distractedly, fiddling with the tassels on his bag.

“But after a certain point it was more a leap of faith for everyone involved,” he adds in earnest, his deep blue eyes lighting up. “It was much less about the externals and far more about – which was part of the attraction and I knew it would be this way – revealing yourself from inside.

“In the end it was about I guess all of us being brave enough to just let it all hang out and hope that it would work.

“[We needed] to be satisfied that we’d given it our all, and, in my case as an actor, it was mostly acting with this boy and having to be completely exposed in a way from inside, so it was much more of an internal job.”

Incredibly tough

The film sees The Father and his son, The Boy, played by 13-year-old Kodi Smit-McPhee, on the road in a dead, barren landscape, fighting for survival among the last few remaining humans, many of whom have turned to violence and even cannibalism for survival.

Mortensen has a 21-year-old son, Henry, but he doesn’t feel you have to be a parent to understand The Road, which also stars Charlize Theron as The Mother.

“Being a father and having a son was a way in initially, but after that you don’t have to be a parent to understand this story I don’t think. It really came down to being naked from the inside, you know?”

The movie – which follows The Boy and The Father through a decaying, wintry world – was mostly filmed on location in bitterly cold winter in Pennsylvania and Oregon to recreate the atmosphere of the novel, which was incredibly tough on the cast and crew.

“It was necessary that it be really tough – the harsh landscape and weather conditions – and it was helpful to Kodi and to myself and the crew.

“The landscape was so real, so gritty, so truthful that you had to live up to that, you had to reflect that and your behaviour had to be very real and you couldn’t hide at all emotionally.”

Mortensen really did suffer for his art, enduring starvation and freezing weather conditions to make his performance as true as he could. How did he survive?

“There was a big feed before the last couple of days when we did the flashbacks with Charlize there, I just went out and made a complete swine of myself,” he jokes. “It was nice, because I wanted to seem somewhat healthier than I had been for the previous months.”

But the actor – famous for playing warrior Aragorn in Lord Of The Rings and tough roles in David Cronenberg’s A History Of Violence and Eastern Promise – gives huge credit to his young co-star for helping him through the role of The Father.

“It wouldn’t work if I didn’t have a partner like Kodi who could pull certain things out of me and then I could return it.

“That simplicity, that relationship that was forged through hardship and also through having a good time, frankly. And you feel that on the screen.

'An honour'

“I was worried when I got cast because this boy in the story breaks your heart, so I thought how are they going to find that boy? And luckily we did. Kodi is amazing in the movie, he’s an extraordinary individual. I think that’s a measure not just of his talent, but his humanity.

“He could be joyful and then he could just focus and deliver what his character required. The sorrow, the doubt, the fear. And then just that naive happiness he has.

“I like the dynamic between father and son because The Boy doesn’t know anything of the world that was. It’s only what I tell him and show him in picture books, so it’s really interesting to play that.

“As adults I think we live in a very heavy way, we’ve accumulated a lot of doubts and regrets and nostalgia whereas kids are just there.”

Mortensen confesses that until he was sent the script he had never read the best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, from the writer of No Country For Old Men.

“I’m a fan of Cormac McCarthy and I have read all of his books except The Road. I hadn’t got around to reading it, just out of stubbornness – like if someone says, ‘You’ve got to see this movie’, then I don’t.” He laughs and adds: “If someone says you must see The Road, please do.”

But he was sent Joe Penhall’s script and he was converted. “I read the script by Joe and I thought it was a great story and I realised it was quite an honour to be offered this role. So then I ran out and got the book, and it’s one of those books you can’t put down – if you’ve read it you know what I mean. I read it all and realised it was a very good adaptation, which became better and better as we went along. Including Lord Of The Rings, I think it’s probably the most faithful adaptation of any book.”

And the actor insists it wasn’t just him who was so moved. The whole crew, who all had copies of the book on set with them, were brought together by the story. “That support you get from crew members, when you feel that people are really into the story, it lifts you, it makes you braver.”

Mortensen says he is delighted that The Road seems to be touching audiences. “I’ve seen people after screenings, where a lot of people have a sort of a blissed-out look on their face, or even a smile, but at the same time tears in their eyes.

“I think you’d have to be quite obstructed internally somehow if, whether you like the movie or not, you’re not moved by it.”