Viggo Mortensen Quotes (20 Quotes)


    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.

    In a movie, you're raw material, just a hue of some color and the director makes the painting.

    The way we present ourselves is a veneer, and beneath that, there are a lot more unpleasant things. Other directors might have missed a lot of the subtleties of this story and made a meal out of the violence.

    You get all these things, there are all these letters and gifts, sometimes strange ones most of the time it can be really nice. But at the same time, it's overwhelming. Because I know I'm going to have to look through it. Most of it is filling the corners of my house and I can't respond to it all right away.

    I've been told that I've arrived many times over the years so I take it with a grain of salt. It's a relatively new situation obviously, but if it all went up in smoke tomorrow, I wouldn't really care that much. There are a lot of things that interest me. As for my fortunes, it's really a crap shoot.


    I mean, I've been around a long time compared to a lot of other actors. I mean, I've been working on and off for 20 odd years.

    When you say mainstream, that usually implies mediocre. And this is not mediocre. There's probably a good chance that it could be the most widely seen of any of his movies, but he's still peeling the layers away, looking at how weird we are, looking at how strangely we look at the world, looking at how prickly we can be, looking at how paranoid we can be.

    It's hard to be objective about it, ... But it's one of the movies I most like. It's the most complete. It really works. I know that it's probably the best movie-making experience and final result in terms of a creative, well thought out movie that's well written and well acted.

    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.

    (Entertainment Weekly) -- Anyone who has seen the attention-grabbing trailer for A History of Violence, ... Aragorn No More Mister Nice Guy.

    It's also just weird getting that much fan mail from strangers. I may just have to say that if I'm doing a book signing or you catch me on the street, then fine. But otherwise I cannot do it anymore. It takes hours everyday and it takes too much time away from other things I must do.


    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.

    It's got the same structure as the film, in some sense, ... but the twists and turns David came up with are quite different. It's a more subtle and more layered look at human behavior, not just a pulp fiction tale.

    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.

    It comes down to the fact that you supply the blue, and they supply the other colors and mix them with your blue, and maybe there's some blue left in the painting and maybe there isn't. Maybe there wasn't supposed to be any there in the first place. So have some fun and make a good blue and walk away.

    It's a simple narrative on the surface, ... The setting, certainly. And there are certain things that remind one of genre imagery that you've seen before, whether it's action movies or crime movies or Westerns. There are a lot of elements that look familiar. But it's kind of like the family itself. Everything that looks normal, in the end, isn't really. And like a lot of David's movies, at the end you say, 'Well, is anyone really normal'

    There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever.

    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.

    I have friends who I get along with who I know get very uncomfortable being alone, unless they're with people, talking all the time. Whether it's on the phone, or in person, they're never by themselves. Whereas I could be alone for months


    More Viggo Mortensen Quotations (Based on Topics)


    Movies - Time - Violence - History - Drawing & Painting - Running - Work & Career - Place - Books - World - Facts - Sense & Perception - Creativity & Innovation - Planning - Boredom - People - Laziness - Family - Soccer - View All Viggo Mortensen Quotations

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