Viggo Mortenson may be most famous for playing Aragorn in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings, but he’s had a long and varied career that has been filled with accolades and box office hits. He started his career in the Harrison Ford classic, Witness. It was not a remarkably memorable performance, but it did kick-start him as someone that would consistently be on the silver screen from 1985 to present. This includes 64 total films and three Oscar nominations.

Often seen as an ‘outsider’ actor, Viggo has always been careful about what projects he wants to be involved with, according to an interview with the Guardian: “I don’t really look for movies based on the budget or the nationality or the language,” he has said. “I just want to be in movies that I wouldn’t mind seeing 10 years from now.”

True to his word, Viggo has had more great performances than can fit on this list. Here are the best from his nearly 37-year career.

6 Hidalgo (2004)

         Buena Vista Pictures Distribution

Hidalgo is a straight-up adventure movie and doesn’t try to be anything else. Directed by Joe Johnston of The Rocketeer and Jumanji fame, Hidalgo wasn’t exactly in the running for any Oscars when it came out. Viggo, however, leads the film as the perfect action star for a throwback movie like this.

His character, Frank Hopkins, is a down-on-his-luck circus cowboy who is given the opportunity to compete in the world’s most deadly horse race across a desert. The role itself isn’t full of scenes that showcase Viggo to his full ability, but it does have a quiet confidence that only he can pull off. It’s messy and of its time, but there’s no one else in the world that could have played Frank Hopkins like Viggo did.

5 Captain Fantastic (2016)

     Bleecker Street 

Released in 2016, Captain Fantastic netted Viggo Mortensen one of his three Academy Award nominations. Though he has yet to win, this movie may have been his closest shot so far. It’s a very Oscar-friendly movie about Ben Cash (Mortensen) raising his family off the grid with his wife. The film takes a tragic turn as his wife takes her own life, and Ben is forced to evaluate the life they created together.

All the performances in this film are great, but it’s Viggo Mortensen who stands out the most as the patriarch of a family in crisis. Viggo Mortensen brought in the only Oscar nomination for this film.

4 The Road (2009)

      Dimension Films

The Road may go down as one of the most underrated films in Viggo Mortensen’s entire career. It had a budget of $25 million and was only able to bring in $27.6 million. It received positive reviews, but audiences weren’t in the mood for a dreary story about the worst of humanity. The film is an almost unbearably dark apocalyptic tale based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. It’s gorgeously shot and tensely lit. The score from Nick Cave and Warren Ellis is one of the most unsettling movie scores of the 2000s.

Viggo Mortensen and a very young Kodi Smit-McPhee play a father and son, aptly named “Man” and “Boy”, attempting to survive a cruel and unforgiving post-apocalyptic world. Unlike a lot of other films of this nature, the humanity of the world isn’t worn up on their sleeve. Instead, it is slowly revealed in the quiet moments the characters share together between dangers. Each of these scenes is completely knocked out of the park by Viggo in his most tragic performance to date.

David Cronenberg’s Eastern Promises Follow-Up Goes After Jason Statham

3 A History of Violence (2005)

     New Line Cinema

Viggo has a long history of working with acclaimed director David Cronenberg, and will continue to do so in their upcoming collaboration, Crimes of the Future. A History of Violence was their first, and it’s clear from the start of the movie that they are a perfect fit. It’s a dark tale following Tom Stall, a man who kills a couple of robbers who were attempting to rob the diner he owns. Most people in town are surprised that Tom was capable of this, but as the film progresses, his dark and violent history comes to life. The film was nominated for two Oscars, neither of which were for Viggo. He would later get more critical acclaim with David Cronenberg, as seen later in this list.

Viggo himself, however, may see this as his best film to date, according to an interview notated by Hollywood Reporter: “If not the best, it’s one of the best movies I’ve ever been in. There’s no such thing as a perfect movie, but in the way that that script was handled, the way it was shot … it’s a perfect film noir movie, or it’s close to perfect I should say.”

2 Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2001 - 2003)

This Lord of the Rings role is the role that almost everyone knows Viggo Mortensen for, and it may have been the first for a lot of people as well. There’s nothing wrong with that, because it just happens to be one of his best.

Viggo has a lot of great scenes to showcase his range as an actor, but it’s his physicality that he may be most famous for in this role. The role of Aragorn saw Viggo training in sword fighting, taking up horseback riding, and even sustaining injuries during stunt sequences. Those are some Tom Cruise levels of commitment.

It’s one thing to play a role well - but it’s another thing to make a character iconic on performance alone. That’s exactly what Viggo Mortensen did here.

Best David Cronenberg Movies, Ranked

1 Eastern Promises (2007)

     Focus Features

This is the second time on this list that there was a David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen collaboration, and Eastern Promises is not only the best of their career together, but the best in Viggo’s entire filmography.

He plays his most unrecognizable character yet as Russian enforcer Nikolai Luzhin. The role is dark, sinister, and yet you can’t help but root for him. It’s a masterclass in acting and storytelling, and it represents one of Viggo’s three Academy Award nominations. Viggo probably would have won, if it hadn’t been Daniel Day Lewis bringing in the best performance of his career, too, with There Will Be Blood.

Eastern Promises, much like Viggo Mortensen’s entire career, is written in the language of nuance and subtlety. It’s a lot more about what isn’t said, than what is. Viggo Mortensen is an incredible actor that has been showing the world for over thirty years. With Crimes of the Future coming out in June 2022, there’s still more for him to show.