There are two things that hit you when Lord of the Rings actor Viggo Mortensen enters a room. The first is that the acclaimed actor is every bit as drop-dead sexy as the characters he portrays onscreen. The second is that he’s nowhere near as tall as you’d expect, well under the towering figure he cut in Peter Jackson’s lofty epics. No matter, dressed in a pair of rugged blue jeans and a crisp button-up shirt, the cleanly shaved thespian is a jaw-dropper in person, and it took all my strength of will to not swoon head-over-heels during our introduction.

The reason for our meeting (and when I say “our” I mean mine and three other critics from around the Seattle area – oh well – along with Mr. Mortensen) is Hidalgo, the thinly based-on-fact story of long distance horseracing champion Frank Hopkins, just released on DVD. This rousing tale of adventure stretching across two continents attracted Mortensen for many reasons. “It was a potentially rousing adventure story, a heroic journey, not unlike The Lord of the Rings, but from a different point of view,” said the actor.

“There a little moments of trust, of honor, that attracted me. It’s an ordeal, this story; you really see what is happening to [Frank, how his character is forged. But the experience is more important than what happens at the end, to complete the cycle, in that there is one more step: What does that person do with [the experience] of what they have learned?”

A student of many different languages and cultures, it was important to Viggo that the Arab characters in Hidalgo not be portrayed stereotypically, but to give them as much freedom to breathe and grow as his distinctly American central figure. “I thought, if this is done in a respectful way – because it could have been approached differently – and as an universal exercise instead of as a crusade [where] a cowboy goes and kicks ass, than it was worth my time. And, it also could have been a heavy-handed and perverted ‘message story,’ and what I like about it is that [director] Joe Johnston is able to tell an entertaining, thought-provoking story and respect the audience. He’s not telling people what to think, hammering a message home, and I like that.”

Unlike most actors, Viggo is unafraid to tackle touchy subjects or express his opinion in regards to world events. Even if you don’t ask him about them, he’ll still find someway to shift the conversation in the direction he wants it. “If you spend time with anybody, no matter what their belief system is or their point of view – their world view, you’ll find some common ground eventually,” said Mortensen. “We shot it all before the recent invasion of Iraq and our last few days of shooting [were] just as that happened. We’ve been conditioned as an audience – even if it is not intentional – into seeing cultures being insulted or perverted, especially with what is going on in the world right now. And, people would think we were capitalizing on all that – we’ll send a cowboy over there to show those Arabs and Muslims up – and it isn’t like that. It shouldn’t be remarkable that men, women, Arabs, Christians, Native Americans, so on, can be treated fairly in an adventure picture.”

Viggo, an accomplished artist and poet whose own work doubled for his lothario character’s in A Perfect Murder, sees connections between his own personal creations and the movies he chooses to be a part of. “I guess I am interested in tests, or ordeals, whether it is the stories that you are telling [or] in a drawing or in people’s lives. The things we remember in life are the good and bad things that happen to us out of the ordinary; whether it is a horrible car accident or a friend gets sick and dies or [other] family problems. It is things that come at you that take you by surprise [and] rearrange your life for a long or a short period – those are things you remember and hopefully learn something from. The thing about the ordeal, for a time at least, clears and purifies your vision of yourself and how you fit in or don’t fit in to the world.”

The hard part for any actor is trying to create a living, breathing character that exists as much off the screen as much as it does on it. But when that character is already a living, breathing person and they’re shrouded in both mystery and fact, that challenge becomes even greater. “I try to be respectful to what I can learn about [the character],” said Mortensen. “With Frank Hopkins, it is not just what is written, which is limited – it’s mostly specialized equine history about his forward thinking appreciating the Mustang as a breed – but I [also] found it equally instructive to learn the oral history among horse people that I discovered. There was a woman up by the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana that lived in the nearby town of Browning, she was like 94 at the time, and she still talked about having met [Hopkins] when she was a little girl. It’s my job to try and respect that, to live up to that [memory].”

“I also have in mind, that, this is myth. A lot of the things that are handed down or added to, are metaphor, and are helpful in highlighting certain values and certain ideas and I think that is a necessary dynamic to the identity. Our identity, as a nation – any nation – is based on myth, on storytelling, on making up stories and exaggerating the accomplishments of extraordinary individuals over time. Whether it is John Kennedy or George Washington or any numbers of men and women whom throughout history have done something extraordinary or out of the usual both good and bad. You have to be careful that it’s not misapplied.”

And what about the movie? Did it turn out as Viggo envisioned?