Viggo Mortensen’s allergy to stardom

Viggo Mortensen can’t stomach Hollywood actors, said Zoë Heller in The New York Times. Mortensen has spent the years since he played Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings trilogy acting in smaller projects, like an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic novel The Road and A Dangerous Method, in which he plays Sigmund Freud. When he’s not making independent movies, he spends his time in art galleries or at the small publishing house he owns, rather than hanging out with big stars at places where they’ll be photographed. “I see people doing that stuff, and to me, it seems pathetic and ridiculous and kind of…well, humiliating,” he says.

He’s particularly put off by actors who go through the motions once they’re rich and famous, coming in late and leaving before scenes can be re-shot. “There’s no excuse for that behavior,” he says. “You’re tired? Come on! The crew isn’t tired? The crew who got here two hours before you, and who’ll be here two hours after you leave, and who are being paid, in many cases, one thousandth of what you’re being paid?” That’s why he avoids working in blockbuster films. “Life is too short to work with idiots.”

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