Quotes by Viggo Mortensen - Page 5

Captain Fantastic touches on that [division]. You meet this family that lives off the grid in the woods and you go, "Oh, it's some kind of liberal utopian fantasy. The enemy is gonna be all these conservative types that they'll probably run into, and that's going to be the story."
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Running
Enemy
Woods
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I know people who prepare their roles in such a way that they technically look ahead and memorize their gestures, and then they stick to it. Those that are technically proficient enough can make it seem natural, but they do that and don't really take in what other people are doing.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Gestures
Looks
People
Roles
Look People Way
Ahead
Enough Look People
Technically
Memorize
Prepare
Proficient
Stick
Such A Way
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Yes, I would agree that America, just like Spain was in the 17th Century, is the main empire of the world and they are the ones who, on the surface, are the most pushy: pushing their language, pushing their culture - or what there is of it - pushing by force their system on others.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Agree
America
Culture
Pushing
Spain
Empire
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Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it’s just an extension of childhood play… Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don’t need any director telling them “You really have to believe in it.” They believe in it completely.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Kids
Believe
Fashion
Play
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It's easy to get depressed and think, "Well, what's the point?" But it's the same as, "Well, we're all going to die, so what's the point in brushing my teeth or even saying hello to anyone or obeying traffic lights." You can do that, but that's certainly not going to take you anywhere.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Light
Saying Hello
Thinking
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Freud was the son of a Jewish merchant who had to move his whole family to Vienna because he couldn't get work. He, as a boy, had to watch his father be mocked and abused on the street for being Jewish... You develop a thick skin and you develop a certain kind of wit to defend yourself.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Family
Abuse
Certain
Father
Moving
Son
Thick
Thick Skin
Vienna
Whole
Wit
Jewish
Boy
Skin
Family Work Father
Defend
Develop
Watch
Street
Freud
Merchant
Mocked
Move
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In a lot of places in the United States and certainly even more places around the world, the image of the cowboy has become, for some people, a negative one. The word 'cowboy' implies a strong, stubborn individual whose individualism depends on pulling down other people's individualism.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Cowboy
Depends
Individualism
People
Strong
World Negative People
Implies
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I was born in New York but as a baby moved to Venezuela and Argentina. I've also lived in Denmark, where my father's from. I've traveled a lot, and having that sort of background probably increased the chance that I was going to remain curious as an adult about people who are different.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
New York
Baby
Father
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Looking at acting, in the movies or the theater, and the way I like to look at it, it's just an extension of childhood play... Kids play and imagine in a very intense fashion and they don't need any director telling them, 'You really have to believe in it.' They believe in it completely.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Intense
Extension
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I met Cindy [Sheehan] near Crawford, Texas. I went out to personally thank her for waiting patiently by the road in front of George and Laura Bush's ranch for an answer from her President as to why and for what her son and others had been sacrificed in the unlawful invasion and occupation of Iraq.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Iraq
Son
Texas
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Every year I hear people complain that the quality of screenplays and movies is declining. In my opinion, the vast majority of scripts written - as well as most movies that are released - are not very original, well-written, or interesting. It has always been that way, and I think it always will be.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Majority
People
Screenplays
Scripts
Thinking
Well Written
Years
Declining
Vast
Hear People
In My Opinion
Released
Vast Majority
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One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from a horse master. He told me to go slow to go fast. I think that applies to everything in life. We live as though there aren't enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Best
Advice
Done
Enough
Horse
Hours
Pieces
Stress
Thinking
Everything
Will
Life Best Me
Go
Life Best Day
Live
Thing
Life Best Done
Much
Me
Get
Less
He
Calmly
Carefully
Day
Fast
Each
Ever
Master
Got
Quicker
Slow
Though
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One of the main ways that leadership stays in power is by, in various ways, convincing people that they should just let those who are in government govern: 'Trust us. Trust me. Just let us take care of things. Stay out of it.' Your opinions don't really matter. You are isolated. You are insignificant.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Government
Care
Convincing
Insignificant
Isolated
People
Take Care
Trust Me
Govern
Let Us
Opinions
Stays
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I played Lucifer once, which is sort of a difficult character to research. I thought to myself, "We all have the potential to be selfish, to be cruel - at least to think evil thoughts, even if we don't ever act out on them. Even if we don't ever think we behave badly, we probably do more than we realize."
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Character
Selfish
Thinking
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Walking down the street in any town or city in the world and having people look at you and start talking to you, convinced that they know you as well or better than they do members of their own family, that's just an odd phenomenon. But I mean, I wouldn't say it was a bad thing. It's an interesting thing.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Cities In The World
Mean
Members
Odd
Phenomenon
Talking
Bad Thing
Interesting Thing
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I think we're on the wrong path in this country and have been for a while. People are in their camps divided by region, economic situation, race, religion, ideology. And there's a lot of just staying in your camp using technology to bolster your case without actually debating with other people, without discussing.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Technology
Country
Thinking
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When I make a movie, I don't break it down and analyze it. I could but it would get in the way of doing a job - on instinct based on all the research we did going in. you want to trust yourself and your director and your acting partners in the circumstances you're shooting. I don't like to have any kind of overview.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Jobs
Acting
Circumstances
Directors
Instinct
Overview
Partners
Shooting
Trust Yourself Your
Analyze
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As regards Hillary C;inton's foreign policy actions and the powerful vested interests she seems gleefully beholden to, including all the biggest players in the military-industrial complex, I feel that she would be no better an actor on the world stage than Trump and whatever coalition of managers he might cobble together.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Military
Player
Powerful
Copy Quote
Be kind. It's worthwhile to make an effort to learn about other people and figure out what you might have in common with them. If you allow yourself to be somewhat curious - and if you get into the habit of doing that - it's the first step to being open minded and realizing that your points of view aren't totally opposite.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Be Kind
Common
Curious
Effort
Habit
Opposites
People
Realizing
Views
Worthwhile
Totally
Opposite
Yourself Your Step
Allow
Open
Somewhat
Figure
First Step
Minded
Points
Step
View
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Sometimes a scene works and acting is the easiest thing in the world and you don't have to do much of anything - just enjoy yourself and listen to the other actor. When it doesn't work, then every actor has different ways of dealing with the impasse. Sometimes you use memories from the past. Whatever. It depends from job to job.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Jobs
Depends
Different Ways
Impasse
Memories
Past
Dealing
Easiest
Easiest Thing
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The only thing that I always do - is once I've taken on a job, even just to do one scene in a movie, I ask myself, "What's happened the moment the kid was born, until page one of the script?" To answer that simple question, I have an infinite amount of work to do. And I enjoy that part as much as I enjoy any part of making movies.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Jobs
Kids
Taken
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I suppose a good director is like a teacher. I think that someone like David Cronenberg was very much like a teacher, because there's an openness, but a certain set of rules of behavior, and a certain conduct expected. But there's an atmosphere that's relaxed and conducive to exploration, and that is created by someone like Cronenberg.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Teacher
Atmosphere
Behavior
Exploration
Openness
Relaxed
Thinking
Rules
David
Director
Conducive
Cronenberg
Good Director
Suppose
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[Captain Fantastic] it's a great story. It's one of the better scripts I've read, ever, as far as being great from beginning to end. It handles a variety of characters. You have six children who all stand on their own, they're all individuals. And it touches on a very real issue, which is the lack of cohesion and communication in America right now.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Communication
Children
Real
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I think it's my job to like any character I play - to understand and appreciate a character, to look at the world as much as possible from their point of view. I don't look at it just technically: learn the lines, figure out what gestures I want to bring and play, and that's it. I like to learn as much as I can about the person, and see what happens.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Jobs
Character
Thinking
Copy Quote
One of the most recent things we did [in Perceval Press] is a reissue of a fantastic documentary about Russian prison tattoo culture by Alix Lambert called The Mark of Cain. We've done books from Twilight of Empire, that actually has forewords by Howard Zinn and Dennis Kucinich and others, to books of poetry, photography, painting - all kinds of books.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Book
Photography
Tattoo
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Every once in a while, someone would call me a foreigner or a Yankee, or whatever. In the United States, someone might say something, like how kids do, to point out that you're different. That would come as a surprise to me. As you get old, you either get defensive about it or you accept it and you reach out, because you realize the world's full of people like that.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Kids
People
Yankees
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When I was 11, I moved to the United States with my two brothers and my mom. We moved to northern New York, up near the Canadian border, from Argentina, and there was nobody there that spoke Spanish, and because there was no internet at the time, not even cable TV yet, I lost the connection with my childhood friends and the culture I had been brought up with for my first decade completely.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
New York
Mom
Brother
Two
Copy Quote
It doesn't matter how bad things are, something good could happen always. And it doesn't matter how many excuses you have for behaving in an unkind manner towards others. There's never any excuse for not being kind and it's always better to be kind even if it seems pointless and that in fact is the highest wisdom - being kind. It sounds like a very noble, ethereal, simplistic idea but it's true.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Excuse You
Ideas
Sound
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We all experience many freakish and unexpected events - you have to be open to suffering a little. The philosopher Schopenhauer talked about how out of the randomness, there is an apparent intention in the fate of an individual that can be glimpsed later on. When you are an old guy, you can look back, and maybe this rambling life has some through-line. Others can see it better sometimes. But when you glimpse it yourself, you see it more clearly than anyone.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Fate
Guy
Suffering
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I wrote a letter to the magazine [Time magazine] pointing out that [Richard] Corliss's comparison of Christopher Lee's Saruman to Osama Bin Laden, and the vastly outnumbered defenders of Helm's Deep united against the Orcs to the "Coalition of the Willing" fighting the good fight against Muslim hordes, displayed the simplistic, xenophobic, and arrogant worldview that makes the government of the United States feared and mistrusted around the world. The editors claimed they had no space to print my brief letter, which I felt was dishonest and cowardly.
Viggo Mortensen / Actor
Space
Editors
Fighting
Copy Quote

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Viggo Mortensen Quotes - Page 5

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