The road less travelled

Viggo Mortensen is selective when choosing his roles, including Good and The Road. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Viggo Mortensen is not a man for short answers. When he gets on a roll - which he quickly does when it comes to talking about Good, yet another movie about Nazi Germany but also a departure from the recent spate of them - it soon turns into a treatise on personal responsibility, society, democracy, and a lot more besides.

You almost feel rude for butting in and reminding him that our chat comes with a time limit which Mortensen takes in good heart. "Sorry for the rambling," he laughs later as our 20 minutes come to an end.

He's been holding court in a Wellington hotel room while on a flying visit to promote the movie and catch up with an old friend or two from his Lord of the Rings days - including a visit to the Kapiti Coast to see Uraeus, the horse he rode as Aragorn and bought after the film.

"He came right across the paddock - I don't know whether I am flattering myself or he just does that all the time. He seemed to recognise my voice."

Since he rose from Middle-earth to stardom, Mortensen has been in two movies named after horses - Hidalgo and Appaloosa and among his many creative sidelines (which stretch to poetry, painting and music, and photography), he's published a photography book The Horse is Good about the gee-gees he has met and worked with around the world.

His acting career since has also been unpredictable for a guy whose face was the poster of the trilogy's 11-Academy Award winning final chapter.

"The success of it gave us all new opportunities. I have always looked for interesting stories - stories that were going to be challenging and I would learn something from. I have always done that pretty much anyway without thinking 'is it a big or a small budget? I guess since Lord of the Rings and the success it had I have been able to not only look at a script and not only say 'I would like to play that' but it could be made with me."

He's done two movies with perennial maverick director David Cronenberg - The History of Violence and Eastern Promises, a Russian mobster role which earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. He took the lead in Spanish 17th war epic Alatriste - using the Spanish he picked up while living in Argentina as a boy - and now by playing German academic John Halder in Good, the American-born half Danish actor has knocked off yet another nationality. What flag does he want on his CV next?

"I haven't yet played a South Island sheep farmer so you never know. I would have to work on the accent for that."

His profile is about to rise in the coming months, with his role as "The Man" in the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's best seller The Road, the riveting tale of a father trying to save his son in a post-apocalyptic world which they traverse on foot. America's Esquire magazine has already declared the movie the year's most important film, given the depth of feeling its readers have about the book. Let's see here, a book with an ardent following featuring a cross country quest with a person shorter than Mortensen ... deja vu?