Viggo Mortensen Retiring?

Sadly it has been slow on the news front for Hobbit information. This is to be expected since the production is still in the scripting and keeping stage. In the meantime, how about news that Viggo Mortensen may retire from acting, at least according to Times Online.

“In the past week I’ve been from LA to Japan to Korea to Poland to here,” he hisses, describing in near disbelief the travel itinerary for his current promotional tour. “It’s ridiculous! It’s not a healthy way to be. But, as it happens, I’m taking measures to change that.” Which are? “No more movies. I haven’t said yes to one in over a year. I’ve been in all these well-received movies and it seems like I should be doing some more, but there’s other things I want to do. It’s not the right time.”

But when will you come back to film-making? When will you know it’s the right time? Long, long, pause. A sigh. “I really don’t know.”

“Everywhere I’ve seen this movie [Good] play, it ends, the lights go on, and people are completely unsure,” he says, beaming with pride. “They don’t know what to think. And I’m like: ‘That’s OK. This movie doesn’t give you that tragic finale so common in the Holocaust genre. That’s because it’s as much about us, the viewers, as it is about Germany or the Germans.’ ”

He adds that he could have gone the clean-cut billion-dollar blockbuster route. “I was offered some of them after Lord of the Rings,” he says. But they were often “complete crap, all about product placement and marketing”. Yes, but what about the juicy cheques? “I don’t need the money,” he says, slipping once again into swansong mode. “I only want enough money to live and to travel, to send my kid to school [his 20-year-old son Henry is at Columbia University in New York] and to contribute to society.”

Above are just snippets but the full interview is here. Viggo has indicated in the past he is willing to return to Middle Earth but as he pointed out, thanks to the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, he is financially secure and doesn't have to work unless he wants too. Assuming Aragorn is written into the Hobbit or Rings Prequel, I am betting the issue will simply come down to money as it often does in Hollywood.