![]() He wasn’t afraid or worried about the lights, camera, or anything. He was only about 14.2, a quick learner and for a stallion very relaxed on the set. “I had no intention of buying a horse off this movie,” he says, “but I got to really, really like TJ – more formally known as RH Tecontender. RJ was the most agile trick horse, DC the ultimate endurance racer, Doc took the lead as the main chase horse, Oscar was the best ride for supporting actors (John Fusco, the movie’s screenwriter, bought this mustang, retiring him on his American Indian horse conservancy in Vermont), and TJ demonstrated the greatest bond with the picture’s star. During training each displayed special individual talents. Hidalgo’s horsemaster, Rex Peterson, is a Nebraskan cowboy and he helped me a lot.”īy the time cameras rolled, Peterson had selected five sorrel and white horses – RJ, DC, Doc, Oscar and TJ. “Classic Argentinian riding isn’t too different from the Western-style – you’re using your legs and a loose rein. Viggo had learnt to ride as a child when his family moved to Argentina, which was where he learnt to fluently speak Spanish. You’re more brittle when you’re older and you think ahead about the consequences, so if the horse starts swirling around or not responding to you when you’re riding bareback at full speed, it’s scarier.” As a boy, I’d tear across fields bareback without checking for holes or anthills. Sometimes, just by refreshing it, you can regain most of what you knew, although as an adult I was warier. “I think you have a physical memory of things you learn when you’re a child. “A large part of the preparation – beyond trying to get historically into what that period was about, was to ride as much as I could, get back my balance and become comfortable with the particular horse I’d be riding in the picture,” he says. The movie required Viggo to spend many hours on horseback. But never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn. He wins… of course.Īll this is alleged to have taken place in the late 1800s, although some researchers and long rider historians claim that Hopkins, an ex-Pony Express rider and sometime member of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, made up the whole story. Hopkins, who takes his paint horse, Hidalgo (“nobleman” in Spanish), to run the famed (if not mythical) 3,000-mile Ocean of Fire race across the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula for a $100,000 purse – against Bedouins on purebred Arabians. “And then there was Kenny – I rode him at the beginning of The Two Towers he was very easy and relaxed and I just wanted Uraeus to have a buddy.” (The horses were kept on a veterinarian’s property in New Zealand and would receive regular visits from their famous owner).Īfter playing Aragorn in the Tolkien trilogy, Viggo made Hidalgo in 2004, loosely based on the legend of American endurance rider, Frank T. “His name was Uraeus, a Dutch warmblood who played Brego in the film.” This top-level dressage horse, and sire of successful sporting horses, was in semi-retirement before NZ owner and trainer, the late Lockie Richards, agreed to lease him to the LotR production. “I bought the one in Lord of the Rings ’cause I’d developed a really good friendship with him,” says Viggo. An author, musician, poet and photographer as well as acclaimed actor, he can speak several languages and, in 2002, formed Perceval Press which published The Horse is Good, his pictorial homage to the creatures he loves.ĭanish American Viggo is a fierce advocate for horse welfare, most notably wild mustangs and, as moviegoers would know, he can really ride, often taking home the horses at the completion of filming. Never let it be said that actor Viggo Mortensen is a one-trick pony.
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