Viggo Mortensen Reveals Why He Turned Down the Role of Wolverine

The role of Wolverine seems to be permanently linked to Hugh Jackman now that he has been through nine franchise films. He made the role his own and became a fan favorite character and major star through it all. But he was not the first actor who was offered the part. Dougray Scott signed a deal to play the X-Men character, but had to drop out due to an injury sustained on the Mission: Impossible II set. Another actor offered the role was Viggo Mortensen.

In a recent interview with the Lord of the Rings actor on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via The Playlist), he explained why he turned down the role, which he ran by his young son at the time:

The thing that bothered me at the time was just the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over. I was nervous about that. And also there were some things, I mean they straightened most of them out, but I did take Henry to the meeting I had with the director as my sort of good luck charm and guide. In the back of my mind I was thinking he could learn something too, because I did let Henry read the script and he goes ‘This is wrong, that’s not how it is.’

The director then asked Henry if he was familiar with the character. Mortensen explained:

“And he goes ‘yeah, but he doesn’t look like this.’ And all of a sudden the director is falling all over himself and then the rest of the meeting was him explaining in detail to Henry why he was taking certain liberties. We walked out of there, and Henry asks if he will change the things he told him about, and I say I don’t think so. I’m not going to do it anyway, because I’m not sure I want to be doing this for years, and then a couple of years later I’m doing 3 ‘Lord Of The Rings’ so who knows.”

It’s pretty funny that he was so against doing a movie with sequels, but then went on to do LOTR. Although they busted out those movies in just a few years, and the role of Wolverine lasted quite a bit longer. Plu,s he didn’t sound like much of a comic fan, and most actors would jump at the chance to be in an epic like Lord of the Rings. I do think that Mortensen would have been great as Wolverine, but as it turned out, Jackman did a fantastic job, and it really gave his career the jumpstart it deserved.