At the LA press day for the Weinstein Company film, Mortensen recalled his introduction to McCarthy's book. "I read it the same day that I read the script because I thought, 'This is a really good script, a tough story but beautiful, and strangely kind of uplifting at the end.' I went through a lot of things reading the script. I couldn't believe how much my emotion was condensed into it, and visually what it could be, you know? And so I ran out to the book store and I was happy to see that this was a very faithful adaptation of the book."
Joe Penhall's adaptation of McCarthy's novel could quite possibly be the most faithful adaptation of a book to screen in recent history, and Mortensen felt drained after reading both the book and script in the same day. "Yeah, I was worthless that day," admitted Mortensen. "I was at my mother's house, actually, visiting her and she said, 'So, what do you want to do for dinner?' 'Dinner?' I said, 'How can I eat now?'"
The Skinny on Viggo Mortensen's Weight Loss
Mortensen had to lose weight in order to play a man who's existing on just a few scraps of food every couple of days. Asked how he accomplished the weight loss, Mortensen replied, "It took a certain amount of discipline and fortunately I had enough time to get there. I don't know [how much time]. I mean you can always use more. It was as I was traveling and doing other things, promoting Eastern Promises, actually. It was that period. Even at the Oscar's for example, that was like a day before shooting our first day. It was bizarre to go to this ceremony when we'd been already preparing, seeing this world and thinking that way, and suddenly I leave the winter of Pittsburgh and this weird area of town that we're in and I'm suddenly on the red carpet in Hollywood. It was really weird, you know? I felt strangely calm because I said, 'How bad can it be? It's fine. It's nothing compared to what I'm going to be doing the next couple of months. I can handle these photographers. They're not cannibals, as far as I can tell.' Maybe they are..."Since he had to stay as thin as possible, Mortensen couldn't really enjoy the Oscar parties. "I also had to leave. I had to be on a plane, so no," said Mortensen. "There was a chocolate shaped Oscar at the Governor's Ball with gold wrapping and I remember I ate the hat off of that."
There are flashbacks scenes in The Road that show Mortensen, Smit-McPhee and Charlize Theron (who plays Mortensen's wife and Smit-McPhee's mother) in slightly less dire times. Those scenes required Mortensen to look a little more fit, however there just wasn't time for Mortensen to really put on any weight. "The last few days of the shoot Charlize showed up to do all those flashback scenes, and I was saying, 'It would be great if I had a week where I could eat and gain some weight,' because I'm supposed to look healthier and then gradually less as you see the evolution of our relationship and her eventual disappearance. They said, 'I'm sorry...,' and so I started cheating. Like a couple days before I started [to cheat] - and I couldn't eat. My stomach didn't want that much food. But I started for a couple days before she showed up, and then the day she showed up I was just wolfing down huge amounts of food and really was like, 'Wow, that's what that is!' Not that I wasn't eating before, but I wasn't overeating."
His food of choice? "Lots of Italian food, sweets, lot of sweets. Most of the movie what I ate was dark chocolate and drank a lot of mate, but I indulged myself tremendously to the point where I had to lie down. My body couldn't take it. It did work. I see I can it in some of the scenes with her."
Bonding with His Young Co-Star
In addition to getting prepared physically for the role, Mortensen had to develop a relationship with the actor who played his son. The two are in nearly every single scene and if we don't buy their relationship the film does not work. Smit-McPhee may have very few acting credits to his name, but he now can list Mortensen as a fan."My first worry when I said yes, which is always what happens to some degree, you say yes when you're offered this role and then you think, 'Oh no, now I've got to do this. How am I going to do this?' And in this case more than usual because in talking to the director I knew that he was going to, in principle, do things right as far as the look, shooting in real places and not green screen," said Mortensen. "The places we were going to shoot in were going to look right. The people he hired, as far as other actors and crew, were all really good. So if we had some luck with the weather, we might have a chance to make this look right."
Page 2: Working with Kodi Smit-McPhee and Those Retirement Rumors
