Lads of the Ring (Toronto Star)

Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom - Sex symbols generate huge following

PETER HOWELL

NEW YORK- A woman in Toronto wants to marry Viggo Mortensen.
Actually, there are women all over the world who want to do this.

But the Toronto woman has an edge. She knows a journalist who will be interviewing the studly Lord Of The Rings actor. She asks - commands - the scribe to pass along the message that she's available anytime, anywhere, anyhow. All Viggo has to do is nod, or simply wink.

"Tell her I'm too busy doing press to marry her," Mortensen says, when the proposal is duly passed on.



He smiles. He's heard this kind of pitch many times. Like his heroic character Aragorn in Peter Jackson's Rings trilogy, he has a job to do and he's not yielding to distractions of any kind.

"It's flattering to hear that someone's interested in you, but at the same time if it weren't for the success of The Lord Of The Rings then that would not be the case. These things (marriage proposals) are results, just like box office results or prizes or other attention. These things are beyond what we did and what I'm talking to you about."

Mortensen is being humble, not to mention a tad too serious. Women were attracted to his laser-blue eyes and chiselled chin long before The Lord Of The Rings. The 45-year-old bachelor, married once previously (he has a teenaged son), has been drawing sighs from the audience since his first screen appearance in Witness. That was 18 years ago, when he played an Amish farmer opposite Harrison Ford.

There have been many roles since then, and many women for Mortensen. His resume includes A Perfect Murder (1998) and A Walk On The Moon (1999), movies where he made love to Gwyneth Paltrow and Diane Lane. In A Perfect Murder, he even painted the large canvasses his artist character used to help woo Paltrow from her husband, played by Michael Douglas.

Mortensen is used to having wet kisses blown in his direction, but his sex appeal has certainly risen since he assumed the mantle of Aragorn, the fearless warrior whose role becomes all the greater in The Return Of The King, the final chapter of the Rings trilogy, opening Wednesday.

Not that he appears to take any notice of the attention, or to seek it. His hair is shorter and neater than the shoulder-length locks of Aragorn, and he's certainly better bathed - scruffy Aragorn obviously puts saving Middle-earth ahead of personal hygiene. Mortensen is every bit as enigmatic as his screen hero, however.

His blue sweatshirt has indecipherable red script on it - perhaps fan mail from an elf? He sips tea with a metal straw out of a metal urn that looks as though it were fashioned by Lord Sauron himself.

Mortensen considers himself fortunate to have been chosen for Aragorn, the role of a lifetime. The casting was a last-minute thing. The job was originally given to Irish actor Stuart Townsend, but four days after filming began in the summer of 1999, director Jackson decided that Townsend, then 27, was too young.

"I have been very lucky," Mortensen says. "Once given this role I did my best with it and there was a lot that I found that I could connect to and build on and hopefully to Peter Jackson and the storytelling. But getting the role itself was one of those things that come your way. I'm not exactly sure why ... if they'd had another month to think about it, they would have probably chosen someone else ...

"But I don't assume that it was meant to be - that I was meant to get a lot of attention or have people say, `Do you want to marry me?' It's just one of those things and I just take it as it goes."

Mortensen's humility isn't forced or faked. He's been exactly this same way in interviews about other movies. He was born in New York, yet he doesn't seem or sound like an American. His father is Danish, and Mortensen seems Danish himself, even though he doesn't speak the language.

His Rings co-star Miranda Otto says she can't imagine anyone else playing Aragorn.

"I always said that Viggo was the Renaissance man. He is sort of like a man from another age in some way. He still has so many things that men of other times were skilled at. He is skilled with horses; he's skilled with swords, a skilled writer, painter and musician. He is just a creative force ... and a very gentle human being with a good sense of humour. He has a certain sort of stillness or mystery for people. They can't grasp every part of him because he is so multifaceted."

Other Rings colleagues say similar things about Mortensen, and he returns the affection in his own quiet way. He's brought with him to New York elegantly bound copies of photos he took on set. He's distributing them one-by-one to his co-stars, as he meets them on the interview rounds.

He's such a deep individual - not to be confused with devious - it's almost impossible to get a simple answer out of him. All of his responses to questions are extremely thoughtful and delivered at great length.

He seems to enter a trance state when a question is posed. There are no sound bites for this boy.

He takes so long to answer a query, you're tempted to grab him by the shoulders, shake him gently and say, "Dude! It's only a movie about elves and hobbits!" And don't get him started on politics. He's against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, but his reasons are so complex and qualified, he seems to think The Economist is interviewing him, not quote-hungry movie hacks.

Yet there's no doubting the man's sincerity. He insists acting is no more important in his life than any of his other pursuits, and he strives to keep everything in balance. No wonder so many women want to marry him.

"If we were talking about paintings I had made or you were talking about my son, or if we were talking about a garden I had planted or photographs I had made or poems, I would speak to you, hopefully, in as focused a way as that," he says.

"(Acting) isn't the biggest thing there is. I wouldn't say there is one thing and I don't really make a difference between those things. It sounds silly, but if you come over to my house and I'm going to make you dinner, I'm going to just focus on that and I'm going to try to do a good job with it because I'm interested in it. It's only a pain in the ass if you really don't want to do something. Then it's like a chore."

Like many of the people who worked on The Lord Of The Rings, Mortensen has been profoundly affected by the titanic struggle of good against evil, first written by author J.R.R. Tolkien during the darkest days of World War II. Mortensen sees many parallels between contemporary nations and politicians with the places and players of Middle-earth.

He thinks the message of the movies, as with the books before them, will live long beyond the final frame of The Return Of The King. He has an interpretation of the trilogy that reveals how deeply he's thought about it.

"I don't think there is an absolute evil in the story, and I don't think it has a specific resonance - I don't think it's Mordor, Sauron or the ring. It resides in anyone who wants to force people to do things against their own will.

"I think that's something that people always have to work at. What are my real motivations, how do I deal with my family or my friends or my society? That is something that will never go away. In fact, we have to be vigilant and if you're going to look for bad things or evil, you should first look inside. How am I treating people around me? You can have someone in a restaurant talking about history and freedom and `We must do something about the economy or something about people and justice,' yet they treat the waiter like shit.

"Wait a minute, it's right where you are."

Mortensen's quiet dedication and unaffecting ways really impressed Orlando Bloom, the other Lord Of The Rings heartthrob.

"I had an incredible time working with Viggo," Bloom says. "I worked very closely with him and he was like a mentor to me, really, chatting, talking about film and just about the day-to-day stuff of getting through making this film. He really influenced the way I approach the work today. He has a lot of integrity in terms of how he approaches it, but he can also have fun with it as well, so it was cool. He taught me a lot."

Bloom is just getting used to the idea of being adored by his own ardent admirers. A group of fixated femmes called Little Legolas Lovers have set up a Web shrine devoted to Legolas, the ace archer Bloom plays in the Tolkien trilogy. The site describes him as a "superhunk" and reveals he enjoys Irish folk music and long walks on the beach.

Two years ago, before the three-Rings circus began, few of these women would have known the British-born Bloom, 26. His previous acting experiences received scant notice. It included playing the sexually available character Rentboy in the little-seen biopic Wilde in 1997.

Now Bloom is a star not only in Middle-earth, but also on the high seas. He played opposite Johnny Depp in this past summer's surprise hit, Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl.

"It's a little bit intimidating," he says, sitting for his own interview.

He laughs when it's suggested that he and Mortensen are competing for the title of most popular hunk in The Lord Of The Rings.

"Well, I don't think I can compete with Viggo ... certainly, I'm (popular) with the six-year-olds and below. He's got the rest covered."

But Bloom has had to make some adjustments. He's had a few weird personal encounters in the past couple of years.

"There's the odd occasion where you get caught, where you were just doing something and somebody will freak out a little bit ...

"I'm getting more easy with it. Because I realized that ... I sort of rationalize it for myself so it's not such a big deal, 'cause it really isn't. I mean, after Pirates came out it was more intense than anything, really."

It must have been really intense, because his hair is still Pirates long (he plays with it while he talks) and he's wearing more gold and silver jewellery than Bluebeard. All that bling-bling ("They're my good luck charms") looks rather incongruous atop the tracksuit he's also wearing. It's quite unlike the blond Robin Hood figure of Legolas.

Bloom takes inspiration on how to handle his rising fame from - of all people - the psychotic Travis Bickle, played by Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver.

"I understand it, because I used to watch Taxi Driver and see Travis Bickle. I'd go, `Wow, see that character?' ... You sit in a movie cinema and you sort of transcend, don't you? You sort of project yourself into a character. You have this idea of who these characters are, but they're not really human. It's just an actor playing a role and so I can understand how that felt, I remember how that felt."

He also received some advice from his Pirates co-star Depp, who has been up and down in the popularity polls. Depp is currently way up, having been recently declared by People magazine to be the Sexiest Man Alive.

"Johnny said to just enjoy it," Bloom says.

"This is a great job and we all really enjoy doing it. It's not open-heart surgery. Enjoy the whole process. You keep certain things private, don't you? There are things in your life where there is a line ... this I'm prepared to talk about. And anyway, the truth is that I understand people wanting know about your private life in some way, because they want to feel like they are getting closer to you."

One of the things he keeps private about is his love life. He's vague when names are mentioned of women he's been linked to.

"The truth is that you have areas where you don't want to go that route. At least you're not fuelling the fire. You're going to get a few bullets, a few snaps taken here and there. You can't avoid it, but you can avoid fuelling the fire. Look at that couple that nearly got married and didn't."

(He's referring to Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez, and yes, it's a good thing not to be like them.)

"At the end of the day, the fans that I have are really nice - at least up to date, they have been really nice. I don't have a role where I'm playing a serial killer or an axe murderer and so for the most part the fan mail I get it really friendly and they are wishing me well, really - `Keep up the good work!' and kind of thing."

Bloom says he responds to most of his letter mail, but not to e-mail. Just like Legolas, he's a low-tech guy.

"I don't do email. It's the one thing I haven't gotten into. I don't have my own account."

There's no need for him to enter the 21st century just yet. His next big movie keeps him well into the past once again: In next summer's big-budget movie, Troy, he has the key role of Paris, who starts a war with Greece after he woos Helen of Sparta away from her husband. He'll be starring opposite Brad Pitt, who plays avenging Greek hero Achilles.

"Paris is an anti-hero," Bloom says. "For me, it was like playing a character whose actions fundamentally are wrong - he goes against all the ideas of manhood and the male energy of the time. He's a lover, not a fighter. He falls in love with a woman and creates a war because of it, because of his lust for this woman. It's like the indiscretion of youth.

"So the challenge for me there was to try to find a way to make the character still likeable in some way. To humanize him, you know what I mean? It doesn't happen ever f--king day. Imagine if we were at war right now because Bush stole bin Laden's missus. It's a story, it's the story of stories, but it does deal with jealousy, with love, with anger, with greed, with power - it's all those basic instincts that we as human all have."

There's a big difference between Legolas and Paris.

"Legolas is a Zen, action-speaks-louder-than-words guy. He's an Elf and an awesome warrior. And Paris is like a dysfunctional little prince.

"He's romantic and dashing and handsome and sort of swans to the ladies and does the whole thing. He doesn't really think about the consequences of his actions."

No matter how tough things get in the fame game, Bloom always has other guys around whom he can look to for good counsel.

"One of the things I feel most lucky about, most fortunate for, is to have had the opportunity to work with Viggo and to have worked with Johnny. I've seen first hand how they go about what they do, and they are very gracious. They have their moments, like everybody else, but they're very gracious. They've learned to be more as ease with themselves and with their fame and with their status as actors and as movie stars.

"For a young actor, that's an education and a half right there ... And it's cool to see how they handle the pressure."

Pressure like being asked to prove he's as good an archer as Legolas? (He's not, incidentally.)

Next time he's in a pub, he's sure to be challenged to a game of darts by some punter.

"I haven't had that experience yet, either," Bloom chuckles.

"No doubt I will."