Viggo Peter Mortensen, Jr. (born October 20, 1958) is an American-Danish theater and movie actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He may be best known for his role as Aragorn in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings film trilogy।Mortensen was born in New York. His Danish father, Vigo Mortensen (a farm manager),and American mother, Grace Gamble Atkinson, met in Norway. His maternal grandfather was Canadian. When he was two years old, he moved with his family to Argentina. They remained there until Viggo was age eleven, when his parents divorced and his mother moved back to New York. Viggo moved with his father to Copenhagen, Denmark. Viggo and his father eventually went back to the United States, and Viggo finished High School at Watertown High School. After high school, he returned to Denmark, and became a truckdriver in Esbjerg, Denmark, before, again, returning to to the United States to pursue an acting career. He attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, earning a degree in Spanish. He chose that subject because could get good grades without a lot of study, leaving him free to be in a lot of plays. At his commencement, he refused to wear an academic gown because they were made by sweatshop workers. However, after the Lord of the Rings trilogy, when he was granted an Honorary Doctorate by his alma mater, he did appear in the appropriate robes.
Mortensen has a son, Henry Mortensen, with ex-wife Exene Cervenka of the band X. Henry and Viggo have done public father/son poetry reading together as recently as April 2006. A polyglot, Mortensen is fluent in English, Danish, and Spanish, and conversant in Norwegian. He also speaks French, Italian, and Swedish reasonably well. Mortensen has dual citizenship in the US and Denmark.
Mortensen is an ice hockey fan, particularly of the Montreal Canadiens. He also loves football, and is a big fan of all time Argentinean star Diego Maradona and both the Argentine and Danish national teams, as well as Argentine club San Lorenzo de Almagro.In 1993 Mortensen went to Ireland during a break in shooting, without the consent of the production company, to watch Denmark play in an important match. He is also a fan of the New York Mets.
He has spoken out against militarism and U.S. foreign policy. In continuing with his opposition to the Bush administration's foreign policy he participated in a series of fundraisers for the Northern New York Congressional candidate from the Watertown, New York area, Bob Johnson, in September 2006.
