Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. Indeed, the shorter it is. People lose their capacity to walk, run, travel, think, and experience life. I realise how important it is to use the time I have.
Viggo Mortensen
There’s no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there’s no excuse for boredom, ever.
Viggo Mortensen
Be kind. It’s worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them. If you allow yourself to be somewhat curious – and if you get into the habit of doing that – it’s the first step to being open minded and realizing that your points of view aren’t totally opposite.
Viggo Mortensen
One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.
Viggo Mortensen
I’m not afraid of death, but I resent it. I think it’s unfair and irritating. Every time I see something beautiful, I not only want to return to it, but it makes me want to see other beautiful things. I know I’m not going to get to all the places I want to go.
Viggo Mortensen
If you’re trying to please everyone, then you’re not going to make anything that is honestly yours, I don’t think, in the long run.
Viggo Mortensen
Travel is one of the best anti-war weapons that there are. I’ve been to Iran, and if you’re there you see little kids, cops, old people, cemeteries. Once you see that, you can’t say, ‘Oh, Iran, let’s bomb them.’
Viggo Mortensen
I have a multicultural background, so I tend to have an open mind about things, and I find other cultures interesting.
Viggo Mortensen
I really enjoyed working with New Zealanders as crew members, as teammates. They’re great, and it’s a beautiful country. It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I’ve traveled quite a bit.
Viggo Mortensen
Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed.
Viggo Mortensen
Toronto Film Festival is one of those festivals where there are 400 movies, and unless you have a distributor who is super confident and puts a lot of money into it, sometimes movies can go unwatched or unnoticed.
Viggo Mortensen
You know, real life doesn’t just suddenly resolve itself. You have to keep working at it. Democracy, marriage, friendship. You can’t just say, ‘She’s my best friend.’ That’s not a given, it’s a process.
Viggo Mortensen
Be kind. It’s worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them.
Viggo Mortensen
Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. Indeed, the shorter it is.
Viggo Mortensen
Some people who like dogs don’t like cats, but I’m not like that.
Viggo Mortensen
As far as money goes, there’s a saying in Denmark: ‘Your last suit doesn’t have any pockets.’ You can’t take it with you. You can make all the money you want, but who cares?
Viggo Mortensen
Freud was the son of a Jewish merchant who had to move his whole family to Vienna because he couldn’t get work. He, as a boy, had to watch his father be mocked and abused on the street for being Jewish… You develop a thick skin and you develop a certain kind of wit to defend yourself.
Viggo Mortensen
I like the detail work of telling a story in small pieces, as is done in movie-making, and also the long leap of faith needed to see a theatre performance through each night. Both require focus and self-discipline.
Viggo Mortensen
I’m not that involved in personal grooming. But I try not to be offensive to people.
Viggo Mortensen
I mean, any movie or story that makes you accept and be grateful for something about your life is doing something right.
Viggo Mortensen
I like stories that leave you wanting more, leave you wondering, but don’t tell you everything.
Viggo Mortensen
To be an artist, you don’t have to compose music or paint or be in the movies or write books. It’s just a way of living. It has to do with paying attention, remembering, filtering what you see and answering back, participating in life.
Viggo Mortensen
In my opinion, the vast majority of scripts written – as well as most movies that are released – are not very original, well-written, or interesting. It has always been that way, and I think it always will be.
Viggo Mortensen
I suppose a good director is like a teacher. I think that someone like David Cronenberg was very much like a teacher, because there’s an openness, but a certain set of rules of behavior, and a certain conduct expected. But there’s an atmosphere that’s relaxed and conducive to exploration, and that is created by someone like Cronenberg.
Viggo Mortensen
When we shot ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ we had special permission to film in wild areas of New Zealand that could be accessed only by helicopter. They would drop us off and we would work all day, and they’d pick us up and take us out again.
Viggo Mortensen
In a movie, you’re raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.
Viggo Mortensen
One of the most effective tools that the Cheney-Bush junta has used to marginalize dissenting or even mildly inquisitive American citizens has been the accusation of being unpatriotic.
Viggo Mortensen
In a movie, you’re raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.
Viggo Mortensen
One of the most effective tools that the Cheney-Bush junta has used to marginalize dissenting or even mildly inquisitive American citizens has been the accusation of being unpatriotic.
Viggo Mortensen
I think every family is dysfunctional, and some manage to control it better than others.
Viggo Mortensen
Adult characters are all the things they’ve encountered over time. But kids haven’t accumulated all the life experience, all the regrets. They tend to be more in the moment, more willing to play, to be joyful.
Viggo Mortensen
There’s no sense in doing something, especially if it’s a hard job, if you can’t have a little fun.
Viggo Mortensen
I realise how important it is to use the time I have. I respect people who want to do that by watching television. I happen to want to read books. But I know I can’t read all the books or watch all the movies in one lifetime.
Viggo Mortensen
If you don’t find some way to discuss what’s going on inside you, it can come out in other ways that are self-destructive.
Viggo Mortensen
Like most people I can be lazy, so it’s nice to have a goal or deadline or reason to work out. I feel better when I get to exercise, or when I’m outdoors. I like to hike, swim and run, and I love to play soccer.
Viggo Mortensen
Photography, painting or poetry – those are just extensions of me, how I perceive things; they are my way of communicating.
Viggo Mortensen
Saying you are a patriot does not make you one; wearing a flag pin does not in itself mean anything at all.
Viggo Mortensen
We live as though there aren’t enough hours in the day, but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.
Viggo Mortensen
When I make a movie, I don’t break it down and analyze it. I could but it would get in the way of doing a job – on instinct based on all the research we did going in. you want to trust yourself and your director and your acting partners in the circumstances you’re shooting. I don’t like to have any kind of overview.
Viggo Mortensen
In a lot of places in the United States and certainly even more places around the world, the image of the cowboy has become, for some people, a negative one. The word ‘cowboy’ implies a strong, stubborn individual whose individualism depends on pulling down other people’s individualism.
Viggo Mortensen
I was raised speaking English and Spanish. And I also speak Danish. And I can get by in French and Italian. I’ve acted in Spanish and English, but when something has to do with emotions, sometimes I feel I can get to the heart of the matter better in Spanish.
Viggo Mortensen
In principle, I think the idea of rewarding a good effort is interesting, but movies are generally different from each other as are performances and the conditions on how the performances are given and how they’re edited and so forth.
Viggo Mortensen
I think that people who get to a certain position, and then try to ferociously defend it or build on it, it’s kind of a dead-end street. You see people becoming miserable that way.
Viggo Mortensen
I’m just looking as always for something that’s stimulating and I hope to find a good story that’s a challenge, whether it’s big or small. Or that it finds me. I don’t have like a career plan. Maybe I should, but I don’t.
Viggo Mortensen
I have never been in a natural place and felt that it was a waste of time. I never have. And it’s a relief. If I’m walking around a desert or whatever, every second is worthwhile.
Viggo Mortensen
Jung viewed Freud as a mentor, but he never wanted to be anybody’s disciple.
Viggo Mortensen
A lot of times, movies that are in the top 10 lists or maybe even win Baftas or Oscars, you then watch them a year later and you go, ‘Maybe it wasn’t so great.’
Viggo Mortensen
If in my twenties I’d gotten one of the two-dozen roles that I did screen tests for and almost got, I think I would have become bored with the awards circuit, the whole hype machine.
Viggo Mortensen
Some actors learn the habit of promoting themselves as a brand – by dressing in a certain way, by going out with a certain person – it gives them what they obviously want, which is to keep a level of fame. I’m not putting it down.
Viggo Mortensen
People like to pigeonhole you. It’s easier.
Viggo Mortensen
Anyone can identify with those moments in life where circumstances or people inform us that we’ve strayed from the path of our better nature and intentions. We know what that’s like, and we resist it – so as not to feel like we’re bad people.
Viggo Mortensen
It’s not the end of the world if I can’t get a film job, or if a movie doesn’t turn out well – even though I don’t like it when that happens. There are other things I enjoy doing, and I involve myself in them.
Viggo Mortensen
‘The Road’ is about that fear that all parents can have – ‘What’s going to happen to your child if you’re not around?’
Viggo Mortensen