Viggo Mortensen is taking on the role of Sigmund Freud in A Dangerous Method. The actor reveals how he got inside the mind of the father of psychology. Kate Whiting reports.

With his reputation for being a somewhat intense method actor, I’m half expecting the interview with Viggo Mortensen for his latest role as Sigmund Freud to take place with me perched on a psychiatrist’s couch.

Luckily, he’s not taking things that far today. Instead, the silver-haired, handsome 53-year-old is happy for me to ask the probing questions (in the comfort of a normal chair) and he’s more than willing to talk.

His immediate confession is that he had major doubts about playing the father of psychoanalysis in David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, but that the director, whom he worked with on Eastern Promises and A History Of Violence, brought him round.

“I had some reservations that I wasn’t the best actor for the part, I thought it would be a bit of a leap,” he says, in his softly-spoken, deliberate drawl.

“If another director had asked me to play the part, I might not have, but I’m glad I did, I learned a lot about Freud and early 20th century Vienna.”

The film tells the story of Freud’s friendship with psychologist Carl Jung, and its breakdown when Jung rejects his mentor’s theories.

Mortensen’s approach to acting is all-consuming. For his role as a father in post-apocalyptic film The Road, he shed pounds and spent time with the homeless.

To get under Freud’s skin, he hung out in Viennese antiques shops, leafing through the kind of books that would have been in his library, and learned all about cigars.

“He smoked at least 20 of those big cigars every day, from morning 'til night,” says Mortensen. “If you look at photographs and the very few bits of video there are of him, he’s almost never without one, whether he’s there with his child or studying, reading, or writing – always his cigar is close at hand or usually in his hand.

“I think there’s only one moment in the whole movie where I don’t have a cigar and that’s when Jung first comes to visit and we’re sitting at a table – that’s the only time.

“I like to amass a whole bunch of research, because it gives you a feeling for the world you’re going to inhabit.”

It’s this depth of research that makes Mortensen such an appealing actor to director Cronenberg, who wanted no one else for Freud.

“I love Viggo for the way he prepares. But you don’t do an actor a favour by miscasting him, if I hadn’t thought he was the best guy to play Sigmund Freud at the age of 50, I wouldn’t have cast him.”

A Dangerous Method revolves around three central characters, but is mostly told from the point of view of Carl Jung, some 20 years Freud’s junior, who befriended him in 1907, partly to discuss his young female patient Sabina Spielrein.

On their first meeting, the pair talked constantly for 13 hours.

As a counterpoint to all the talking, there are some eye-opening scenes in which Keira Knightley, playing the initially hysterical Sabina, who embarks on an impassioned love affair with the married Jung, is whipped by Mortensen.

Although probably best known for his 2001 breakthrough as king Aragorn in The Lord Of The Rings, Mortensen didn’t approach Freud any differently.

“No matter how much research you do, and how good the script is, in the end you’re going to be adding yourself, your body, your mind and your feelings to it,” he says.

To find local screenings for A Dangerous Method, click here.