Exploring Tolkien

Exploring Tolkien


An Interview with Viggo Mortensen

September 26, 2023

Here’s the next episode in our series of interviews from the December 2, 2003 roundtable discussions (our Peter Jackson and Ian McKellen episode)!  You can tell that Viggo is thoughtful and soft-spoken, but has a driven personality that allows him to inhabit roles like Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings.


In this episode, Viggo Mortensen discusses:


  • What he does (as a newly discovered sex symbol) with all those phone numbers in his pockets.
  • What he did to train for the films.
  • What it was like coming on set the day before principal filming began.
  • What it was like working with Peter Jackson

Become a member to at https://theonering.com/members to find out what we think about Viggo’s responses, and how he portrayed Aragorn in the films:


  • Why Aragorn’s made-up character arc was necessary–but disappointing?
  • How Viggo’s approach to Aragorn highlights how The Rings of Power writers get characters wrong.