Viggo Mortensen Would Return as Aragorn on One Condition

Originally posted on Men's Journal | By Griff Griffin | Last updated May 30, 2024 4:00 PM ET

Viggo Mortensen is open to reprising his most famous character: Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings.

According to the actor, however, the story would have to be the right one. In an interview with GQ, he said “I like playing that character. I learned a lot playing the character. I enjoyed it a lot. I would only do it if I was right for it in terms of, you know, the age I am now and so forth. I would only do it if I was right for the character. It would be silly to do it otherwise.”

Could he be about to feature in The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum? After all, Peter Jackson is returning as producer, and Gollum actor Andy Serkis is set to direct.

New Line Cinema

“I don’t know exactly what the story is, I haven’t heard,” Mortensen said. “Maybe I’ll hear about it eventually.”

So that seems to be a ‘no’ for the moment, although he did have another The Lord of the Rings revelation to make. Apparently, Mortensen used Aragorn’s iconic sword Andúril from Jackson’s films in his latest movie, 19th century Western, The Dead Don’t Hurt.

For one sequence involving a knight, Mortensen said, “we had found this great, spirited horse, the right kind of saddle, and we made a medieval kind of blanket, and we had the costume for the knight. Everything was right, and then I said, well, we should have a sword. And I did look and there were some good ones and I thought, well, it might be kind of good to use [Aragorn’s sword] that I had because it’s really good.”

The sword wasn’t stolen; Mortensen says Jackson gave him permission.

Read how Warner Bros. took down a Gollum fan film after announcing its own.

This article first appeared on Men's Journal and was syndicated with permission.

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