'It had to be very sincere or it wouldn't work,' says the actor when explaining why he considers playing the character of an unnamed father in the thriller movie the hardest part for him.
- Nov 23, 2009
AceShowbiz - Billed to be the lead star in "The Road", Viggo Mortensen has filmed the movie during the winter and had to reduce his weight. Though playing the character has made him tired physically, the depicter of Aragorn in "Lord of the Rings" trilogy claimed his role was more emotionally demanding. "Yeah. To be honest, that was the hardest part," he told Collider in a recent interview.
"It was harder than the physical part, for me. I mean, I've been in movies where I've had to do physical, you know, whether I was in extreme heat or cold, mountains, horse work, fights, all that," Mortensen explained. "But it's a whole other thing to be naked emotionally in a way that's not just a distraction or a character."
Talking about playing the character, Mortensen admitted, "It had to be very sincere or it wouldn't work because just the landscape we're in is so real. It's so raw and in a way it's such an open wound that our feelings had to be on that level, which was kind of a measuring stick, I felt." He later added, "And then, I've never been in a movie where the environment was so consistently a character. Even though it was dead or dying, it was very alive in its dying, in its death throes. It was so helpful."
Based on the novel with the same name by Cormac McCarthy, "The Road" follows an unnamed father called the Man and his young son as they travel across a barren America that was destroyed by a mysterious cataclysm. Along the way, they encounter grave struggles while having to avoid bands of cannibals and other desperate gangs looking to pillage valuables and food.
During the journey, various flashback sequences occur where the Man remembers events prior to the catastrophe, many involving his deceased wife, who has a much more expanded role in the film than in the original book. Joining Viggo Mortensen in the cast ensemble are Charlize Theron and Kodi Smit-McPhee who play his on-screen wife and son. The film will be released in limited theaters in U.S. on November 25.
