Starfucker Friday: Viggo Mortensen

Maybe the most notable thing about this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Actor is they way they all avoid the limelight. From George Clooney throwing tantrums when paparazzi get near him to Johnny Depp’s silly attempts to be kooky and bohemian and French to Daniel Day-Lewis trying to be kooky and cobblery and Italian to Viggo Mortensen’s secretive private life, these guys are some of the more earnest, camera-shy faces in Hollywood. In comparison, Tommy Lee Jones seems like Kim Kardashian.

I’ve never particularly thought about Viggo Mortensen in a sexual way before. Although he’s all strapping and Danish and chin-clefty and women really dig him, I never quite got it. Maybe it’s because I never saw GI Jane, the movie that made women everywhere (or at least certain writers) swoon.
And I didn’t grow up reading the Lord of the Rings books, so when the movies came out I didn’t really get why people were making such a big whoop. But I went to see the first one at the movie theater anyway; it was decent, if not particularly remarkable. It was definitely the loudest movie I had ever seen, but pretty much all I remember from that night was when the movie theater employee at the mall told my friend that she couldn’t bring in the bag of underwear that she had gotten at the Victoria’s Secret after-Christmas sale, and then there was much dramatic waving of underwear and purse-stuffing in front of a line full of Tolkein freaks. (This was way back in 2001, when movie theaters did their part to discourage terrorism by banning bags that might contain bombs or anthrax or outside snacks. Semi-relatedly, I need to remember to read The Shock Doctrine soon.)
Viggo Mortensen became really famous for playing, um, […pause while I check IMDb…] Aragorn, but I first heard of him when he played Caspar Goodwood in Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady. Poor Caspar really wants Isabel Archer, but she’s totally not into him and instead gets involved the flaming and evil but weirdly sexy Gilbert Osmond, played by John Malkovich. Despite its Oprah-tastic intro, the movie’s really good, and I’m sort of fascinated with the totally incongruous way that Malkovich can be really sexy and really hammy at the same time.

So If I were American expatriate Isabel Archer, I too would fall for Osmond’s evil mincing before marrying Caspar Goodwood, so maybe that’s why Mortensen didn’t strike me as a particularly attractive guy right away. That, and guys with long hair who get really muddy and run around with elves aren’t my thing, either.

That said, the man is a little bit foxy, especially for a forty-nine-year old. And while he has a tendency in movies to a) have really dumb tattoos and b) shave his chest, he also has nice eyes and kind of a slammin’ bod. Also, unlike my masturbation fantasy issues with The Cloon last week, Viggo’s been giving it to me pretty good in Spankworld since about Sunday. He’s always on top, and usually kind of mean about it. Also, his penis is bigger than it looks in Eastern Promises or The Indian Runner.

I bet sex with him would be fun, sweaty, and long-lasting. And, you know, he was married to Exene Cervenka, and I really doubt she’d settle for anything less than a totally kick-ass slampiece. Plus he paints, makes music, and was a big Dennis Kucinich supporter, which means he’d probably be a lot of fun to talk to once the big sexathon was over. But only if his facial hair wasn’t too out of control [see right].

Plus, he’d have to work for it, to make up for the fact that he was in Gus Van Sant’s Psycho remake. Not that I ever saw it, because it seemed like the most horrible idea for a movie ever, and even though Julianne Moore and William H Macy were in it I refused to see it on the grounds that, aside from the fact that a shot-for-shot remake is a really dumb idea, Van Sant had also directed Good Will Crappy Hunting and a video for a Hanson ballad.
Come to think of it, I’ve only seen him in one other movie. He played the artist foil to Michael Douglas’s sleazy businessman in A Perfect Murder, which is one of those Michael Douglas-as-sleazy-businessman thrillers that were so prevalent for most of my lifetime. It’s trashy and kind of wonderful, in a watching-it-because-you’re-home-sick-from-work-and-it’s-on kind of way.

I haven’t seen Eastern Promises, or A History of Violence, or Young Guns II or Texas Chainsaw Massacre III or the other two Lord of the Rings movies. I haven’t seen Witness, which is the first movie he was ever in, and I haven’t seen High School Narc, the ABC afterschool special he was in. But if my last week of jackoff fantasies are anything to go by, I should probably take a trip to the video store soon.  I think my first choice, if I can find it, might be Prison, this trashy-looking prison movie where he’s in his underwear a lot and doesn’t have his chest shaved.  (By the way–check out more clips from that movie, and more Viggo than you could ever hope for, at brego.net)