MY LIFE IN 10 Pictures

“Life is short and the older you get, the more you feel it. I realize how important it is to use the time I have.”

— Viggo

his diverse array of acting roles, Viggo Peter Mortensen Jr. — a musician, photographer, poet and painter — would be thought of as a Renaissance man. Spending his early years in Venezuela, Denmark and Argentina helped make him one. “I have a multicultural background, so I tend to have an open mind about things,” he shares. Though his leading-man good looks may have opened doors, he’s never traded on them. “It’s someone looking at you and not seeing who you are on most levels,” he explains. Perhaps that’s why he always speaks his mind, lets his talent do the talking in artsy projects and focuses on what’s important: being a good dad to his adult son, Henry. To Viggo, who turned 59 on Oct. 20, fatherhood means “caring enough and making time,

even when there doesn’t seem to be time. That’s the trick.”

1976 NATURE BOY After Manhattan-born Viggo lived overseas, he returned to go to high school in upstate New York — “Watertown, jewel of the North Country,” where he “always enjoyed being out in the woods, out on the water,” fishing and hunting.