Viggo Mortensen's Roles and Character Preparation

Viggo Mortensen became a global star as a valiant crusading king in Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy. But then he deftly complicated this virtuous image with a series of dark, dense character studies for the director David Cronenberg. And his latest role is perhaps his most complex yet. In "Captain Fantastic," Mortensen plays a father who raises his six children in the wilderness—then reassesses his convictions as this bucolic fantasy collapses. The fame that came with his "Lord of the Rings" role also gave Mortensen the freedom to exercise his wider artistic imagination: he's a distinguished author, poet, painter, and publisher. Mortensen tells host Alec Baldwin how he got his acting start in school playing the ass-end of a dragon, and explains how his eleven-year-old son convinced him to say yes to the role that would make him famous.

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