By all accounts, Viggo Mortensen is an incredibly talented and cultured man. As well as mastering the fictional dialects of Middle-earth, the actor speaks many other languages including Spanish, Danish, French, Italian, Catalan and Arabic, and he founded a publishing company and has so far released eighteen books containing collections of his writing, art, photography and poetry, not to mention 21 studio albums of largely experimental music where he provides vocals, drums, harmonica, piano and much more.
He’s also a three-time nominee for Best Actor at the Academy Awards, while his most recent effort Falling marks his directorial debut, and he even wrote the script and produced it for good measure. Despite being one of the most ridiculously multi-talented individuals around, though, Mortensen is always going to be best known to a whole lot of people as The Lord of the Rings‘ Aragorn.
It’s been almost 20 years since we last saw him as the character, but it’s still the role he’s most closely associated with, something that’s not about to change anytime soon. After all, Amazon’s mega budget TV show could bring the franchise roaring back to the forefront of the public consciousness, while there’ve also been rumors that some new feature films could be in the works based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s sprawling mythology.
In a new interview, Mortensen was asked about a potential return to Middle-earth somewhere down the line, and it sounds like he’s not ruling it out.
“Yeah, why not? Tolkien, that’s a universe. There are so many influences. The foundation of his stories is Celtic mythology and history, and Nordic mythology and history, and languages. That’s fascinating. There are endless amounts of things you can learn and have fun adapting to the big screen or the little screen.”
Elijah Wood has also admitted he’s open to the idea of a cameo, but it has to be very carefully handled if any of the legacy players do end up making a return to the world of The Lord of the Rings, otherwise it could come off as little more than cheap fan service.