Viggo Mortensen Biography

An actor, poet, painter and photographer, Viggo Mortensen got into the movies in the mid-1980s, starting with small roles in big movies and big roles in small movies. His big-budget breakthrough was with Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Douglas in The Perfect Murder (1998). The same year he co-starred in the Gus Van Sant re-make of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (starring Vince Vaughn). Mortensen became a major star after being cast as the rugged, royal-blooded Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings movies, director Peter Jackson's ambitious trilogy based on J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic. A bankable leading man, he has also starred in Hidalgo (2004), The Road (2009, based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy) and the David Cronenberg films A History of Violence (2005, with William Hurt), Eastern Promises (2007, co-starring Naomi Watts) and A Dangerous Method (2011, as Sigmund Freud).