Viggo Mortensen on why he took The Road

November 6, 2009 by Lance Carter

On his role in The Road:
“To be honest, I was afraid of the role to start with. I thought, ‘Hmm, I don’t know if I am up to the task.’ But, that was the very reason I thought I should do it, try it. Because even if you screw up up, at least trying something different, something that places demands on you that you haven’t dealt with as much or before, it’s always good. Even if you screw it up, in trying to do a good job, you are going to learn something, and I did.”

How his co-star helped him:
“It’s a team sport, making movies. In this case, it’s a story about a father and son. If the son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) wasn’t a great actor and didn’t have a great emotional range, I wouldn’t have done a very good job, to be honest with you. I could have only gone so far. But, because he was so beautiful as a boy, such a wonderful person, but also such a talented actor, he helped me get to places that I didn’t think I could get to.”