"X-Men" Viggo Mortensen Reveals Why He Turned Down The Role Of Wolverine
The actor met with director Bryan Singer but was not at all happy with the idea of making many movies.
Before Hugh Jackman was introduced to the world as the
man responsible for playing Wolverine in the first X-Men films, Viggo
Mortensen had been chosen by director Bryan Singer to play that role. Even
so, the New Yorker declined the offer, which ended up in the hands of his
Australian colleague with a result that is now history.
In an interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Mortensen
referred to the reasons that led him to pass up the chance to bring Cheetah
to life on the big screen: “What bothered me at the time was just the
commitment to endless movies of the same character over and over again”,
admitted the actor raised in Argentina.
"I was nervous about it," he added. “And there were also some
things… I mean they fixed most of them, but I brought Henry [his son, who
knew comics] to the meeting I had with the director as a kind of good luck
charm and my guide. In the back of my mind I was thinking that he might
learn something too, because I let Henry read the script and he said, 'This
is wrong, isn't it.'"
Mortensen later said that Singer began to "fall in love
with himself" when his son pointed out inconsistencies with the original
House of Ideas comics. "The rest of the meeting was him explaining in detail
to Henry why he was taking certain liberties," he recalled.
Finally, as we already mentioned, Jackman ended up assuming the
role of Logan and earning him a place in the hearts of millions of comic
book and seventh art fans. So it was that, like so many other people,
Mortensen can't imagine anyone else playing that role.
“I think
[Jackman] did very well. I'm sure no one could imagine anyone doing better
than him anyway."
