Viggo Mortensen is not the sort of actor you expect to be riddled with doubts.

He comes with a reputation as a serious method actor type, but the confidence he exudes on screen was rattled when he was first approached to play Sigmund Freud.

The 53-year-old admits he had major doubts about playing the father of psychoanalysis in A Dangerous Method, but director David Cronenberg’s, who he worked with on Eastern Promises and A History Of Violence, talked him round.

“I had some reservations that I wasn’t the best actor for the part, I thought it would be a bit of a leap,” he says, in his softly-spoken drawl. “If another director had asked me to play the part, I might not have, but I’m glad I did, I learned a lot about Freud and early 20th-century Vienna.” Read the rest of this entry »

Director David Cronenberg and actor Viggo Mortensen have made three movies together: “A History of Violence,” in which Mortensen played a family man driven to his physical edge; “Eastern Promises,” in which he played a Russian gangster given to outbursts of rawboned brutality; and now “A Dangerous Method,” in which an actor known for his chiseled good looks and compact muscularity delivers an improbably avuncular turn as psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud. The film co-stars Michael Fassbender as Carl Jung and Keira Knightley as Sabina Spielrein, a patient of Jung’s who became his lover and eventually precipitated a break between the two men.

At the Toronto International Film Festival in September, Cronenberg and Mortensen talked about what Mortensen called the director’s “first Merchant-Ivory picture,” while Mortensen nursed a double espresso and a small pot of Argentinian mate tea.

Q. You’ve spent a career making movies about the very drives, impulses and sexual taboos that Freud is so responsible for articulating. It feels like the movie you were always meant to make.

David Cronenberg: The usual question I get is, “This isn’t a very Cronenberg film,” so I think what you’re saying is absolutely correct. It’s sort of about time! It was very cathartic for me, and really a lot of fun. I felt that I was connecting with something very primordial in my life, but also in the development of the intellectual life of the 20th century, which is my century, basically.  Read the rest of this entry »

To get inside the mind of the famed psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud for “A Dangerous Method,” Viggo Mortensen did extensive research and mulled the details with director David Cronenberg. The effort has paid off with a Golden Globe nomination for supporting actor. Mortensen spoke by phone to 24 Frames’ Elena Howe about how he found out, how he feels and what else he’s up to.

E.H.: How did you find out about your nomination?

V.M.: I’m in Madrid. It’s nine hours later, but they don’t show that here anyway. I was headed to work — I’m doing a play — and a friend called and told me. I’m very grateful, but I would have been even happier if [director] David [Cronenberg] had been included. I owe it to him. He made a risky decision to cast me as Freud, and I’m glad to see his hunch paid off. I’m proud to represent “A Dangerous Method” at the Globes.

E.H.: What is the play you’re doing?

V.M.: Ariel Dorfman, who wrote that play “Death and the Maiden,”  he wrote one called “Purgatorio,” which is what I’m doing. It’s heavy on dialogue, like Freud, so I got that back to back. I haven’t been in a play for over 20 years, and there’s lots of dialogue. At first I regretted [signing on for it]. But it’s going well now. Read the rest of this entry »