Viggo Peter Mortensen(born October 20, 1958) is a Danish-American actor, poet, musician, photographer and painter. He made his film debut in Peter Weir's 1985 thriller Witness, and subsequently appeared in many notable films of the 1990s, including The Indian Runner (1991), Carlito's Way (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), G.I. Jane (1997), A Perfect Murder (1998), and A Walk on the Moon (1999).Mortensen made his major breakthrough in 2001 with the epic film trilogy The Lord of the Rings. In 2005, Mortensen won critical acclaim for David Cronenberg's crime thriller A History of Violence. Two years later, another Cronenberg film Eastern Promises (2007) earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Other well-received films in recent years have included Appaloosa (2008) and the 2009 film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road.
Aside from acting, his other artistic pursuits include fine arts, photography, poetry, and music. In 2002, he founded the Perceval Press to publish the works of little-known artists and authors. Mortensen is politically active. He campaigned for Dennis Kucinich in the 2008 United States presidential election, and later endorsed Barack Obama for President.
Mortensen was born in New York City. His mother, Grace Gamble (née Atkinson), was American, and his father, Viggo Peter Mortensen, Sr., was Danish; the two met in Norway. His maternal grandfather was from Nova Scotia, Canada, and his maternal grandmother's family was from New England. During his early years, Mortensen moved with his parents to Venezuela, then Denmark, and eventually settled in Argentina, taking residency in the Argentine provinces of Córdoba, Chaco and Buenos Aires; there, he did his primary school and acquired fluent Spanish. His father managed chicken farms and ranches in Argentina. They remained there until Mortensen was eleven, when his parents divorced and the boys and their mother returned to New York, where Mortensen spent the rest of his childhood. He graduated from Watertown High School in Watertown, New York.[citation needed] After high school he went to St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, earning a bachelor's degree in Government and Spanish.[citation needed] Then, driven by the need for a defining purpose in life, he went to Europe and lived in Spain, England and Denmark, where he took various jobs like a truck driver in Esbjerg, Denmark, and a flower seller in Copenhagen, Denmark, before again returning to the United States two years later to pursue an acting career.
Following his appearance in the Lord of the Rings trilogy in 2006, he was granted an honorary doctorate by his almamater.
