A Night With Actor Viggo Mortensen

Actor Viggo Mortensen was in Brookline, Massachusetts recently to accept the Coolidge Corner movie theater's honor "The Coolidge Award" for his work in such films as "Eastern Promises," "A Walk on the Moon" and of course "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

Preceding the ceremony he spoke for almost two hours with Here and Now's Robin Young about his life and career.

Viggo told Robin that it was seeing films with Dirk Bogarde, Maria Falconetti and Meryl Streep that inspired him to become an actor. Their performances inspired a curiosity about how they were able to do what they did and that led him to want to try acting himself.

Viggo Mortensen also talks about his legendary preparations for roles: to play the Russian gangster in "Eastern Promises" he spent time in Russia learning the language because he wanted to be able to say all of his character's lines in Russian though he knew he wouldn't be called upon to do so, and as he tells Robin, watching Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin also gave him some character insights.