Viggo Mortensen Talks About the 'Beautiful' Scene That He Filmed for THE LORD OF THE RINGS That Didn't Make the Cut
Director Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Lord of the Rings series were so beautifully done. They were epic and grand and truly captured the stories woven in the novels. But just like any other film, not every scene made it into the final cut of the film, no matter how lovely. In a recent interview with NME, Viggo Mortensen, who played Aragorn in the films, talked about a scene he filmed with Liv Tyler, who played Arwen, that he has never even seen since making it.
"There was a scene that we shot as a sort of memory flashback. It was from the courtship days when he first met Arwen – and we shot it just before we were taking a break so I was clean-shaven and prettied up. They’d tried to make me look as young as possible. I had different hair and I was dressed like an elf. It was a scene from the book where they’re walking in this flowery meadow. It was a beautiful sequence but obviously it wasn’t needed for the movie. I’ve never seen it but I enjoyed shooting that scene. It’d be nice to see it actually, it’s not in the Extended Editions either."
Fans would love to see any scenes from the films described this way as well. One other fun tidbit Mortensen offered in the interview was to mention that he bought two of the horses he worked with in the film as well, and he even bought one of Arwen’s horses for a stuntwoman that he became close friends with over the course of filming.
"The person who did that spectacular bit of riding was a stuntwoman who I ended up becoming friends with. I knew how much she liked that horse, so I bought it for her. That one is still around, but the other two have passed away. They were of a certain age already when we [were] shooting and that’s 20 years ago now."
What a nice guy! It’s cool to hear that the cast and crew bonded with the horses involved in the film, and they were given good lives after their jobs were fulfilled.
Would you be interested in seeing the scene that Mortensen described in this interview?