Viggo Mortensen paid a hefty legal bill for stunt performers on the set of "The Lord of the Rings"
The gap between a screen hero and the person playing him is usually measured by the size of the PR budget. Sometimes, though, it works the other way around, and an actor turns out to be so much like his character that you start wondering if the role was cast based on a moral character interview.
Sala Baker, the New Zealand stunt performer who worked on the Lord of the Rings trilogy and also played Sauron himself in the prologue of Fellowship of the Ring, told a story at Motor City Comic Con back in May that he had never shared publicly before.
The stunt team ran into a labor dispute after one of the people who worked with them claimed nobody had actually worked the last two weeks of shooting. They needed a lawyer, the case dragged on for seven or eight weeks, and the legal bill climbed to an amount the stunt group simply couldn't cover.
Then the bill vanished. According to Baker, at the next meeting everyone started dodging the subject like it was the plague, and it turned out someone had already paid the fee and asked to stay anonymous. The name got out eventually. It was Viggo Mortensen.
He paid out of his own pocket for the lawyer representing the men and women who fought in battle beside him every day and every night. Not many people know that story.
For Mortensen, this wasn't a one-off gesture but more of a habit. After filming wrapped, he bought the horses he'd worked with, including Uraeus, who played Brego, and also bought Florian for Jane Abbott, the stunt double for Arwen. In the extended edition appendices, everyone talks about it except Mortensen himself, who consistently steers away from the topic.
What he does off set says just as much: Perceval Press, the publishing house he founded in 2002, has released books from poets, photographers, and critics who had little chance of getting picked up by major publishers.
A political science degree, a public stance against the Iraq War at a time when it actually cost him career points, no social media, and consequently no way to give himself credit for any of it.
