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Actor, director, poet, musician, photographer, publisher – there is nary a creative endeavour to which the American hasn’t turned his hand. He discusses his ‘strange’ work with Lisandro Alonso – and accidentally starring in his own filmViggo Mortensen is a busy man. He is not only an actor, but also a poet, a musician, a photographer and the hands-on owner of a small arthouse press on the website of which he publishes regular updates on pressing issues of the day gleaned from media outlets around the world. He punctuates the newsroll with aphorisms from thinkers he admires. “It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” reads a recent one, from Henry David Thoreau, that accompanies an article on groundwater loss.It is a question Mortensen clearly asks regularly of himself. Shortly before accepting the breakthrough role of Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings, he turned down X-Men because he didn’t want to be trapped into endlessly repeating himself. A three-time Oscar nominee, he is a veteran of 58 films who has made an indelible impression as characters ranging from Tom Stall, a diner owner with a secret in David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence, to the hellscape survivalist Man in the adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and the bouncer turned chauffeur Tony “Lip” Vallelonga in Green Book. Continue reading...