deus in absentia

But if you thought they were the only ones, let me draw your attention to this man:

Viggo Mortensen, aka Aragorn son of Arathorn, aka Sexiest Ranger in Middle Earth

would hike, often for more than a day, to remote filming locations, in costume, for the sake of authenticity

was the best swordsman Bob Anderson (swordsmaster/instructor for LotR, Pirates of the Caribbean, etc) says he has ever trained

occasionally writes poetry (more book!canon than film!canon but um hello)

does all his own stunts

lived all over and speaks about 23940209384 languages

you know that scene at the end of Fellowship when he’s fighting the Uruk-hai? And one throws a dagger at him and he hits it away with his sword? Yeah, the guy who threw it was supposed to miss, but accidentally threw it directly at Viggo. Who just casually Aragorned and hit it away. 

Would randomly give chocolates to the hobbits

According to John Rhys-Davis (aka Gimli), whenever you have a large cast, one or two actors will naturally become the leaders. Guess who ended up in that role.

Single-handedly convinced cast and crew to camp out to shoot a scene in the sunrise

Once hit a wild rabbit with his car by accident. Promptly stopped his car and went to see if the rabbit was dead, needed a vet or if the only merciful thing to do was to finish killing him. The rabbit was dead. Viggo realized he was hungry. So he took the rabbit, made a fire by the roadside and ate it.

According to cast and crew, sometimes you’d just see him disappear in the middle of the night and suddenly he’d come back with fish he’d caught

Had his sword with him at all times. Slept with once.

The best horse rider of the cast, hands down. Rides better than lots of pros, according to a horse trainer. Couldn’t bear to part with his horse at the end of the shooting, so he bough him. The next movie of his also involved horses, and he bought his horse in that one, too.

Knows how to survive in the wild. I’m not kidding.

Hand-stitched a few things in his costume for an authentic “I live away from civilization” Ranger feel. Also told the weapons department to make him a small bow because “Aragorn lives in the wild, he needs a hunting bow, or he’ll starve to death” - literally nobody else had thought about that. Also requested a small stone to sharpen his sword. Suggested that Aragorn would take Boromir’s arm guards after his death. 

Speaking of hand-stitching, once he was touring Japan with a reporter for an article. Walked into a store, took a tshirt, bought it, cut off the print and hand-stitched it into the hat he was wearing. The reporter was going “?????????” the entire time.

When Peter Jackson called up Viggo Mortensen to ask, Viggo didn’t answer at first and said he’d call the next day to give his answer. When he asked his son Henry about it, Henry told him to take the job as Henry was a big fan of the series.

Petrus T. Ratajczyk