Viggo Mortensen Expands On Why He Passed On Wolverine, Has No Regrets

Actor Viggo Mortensen says that he has no regrets about passing on the Role of Wolverine in the X-Men movies. It's a well-known piece of X-Men movies history that Viggo Mortensen was courted for the role of Logan/Wolverine in X-Men, but passed on the part, which ultimately went to a relatively unknown actor named Hugh Jackman. Well in a new interview, Mortensen addressed what made him pass on one of the godfathers of Marvel movies - and why he's totally okay with the decision now, when a comic book movie franchise is about the surest thing a Hollywood actor can be a part of.

When asked if he regrets letting Hugh Jackman get Wolverine, Viggo Mortensen tells with the Happy Sad Confused podcast:

"No I don't. No. I think he did great. No can imagine doing it better than Hugh did anyway, so... I think the think that bothered me at the time was the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over. I was nervous about that I think..."

Mortensen goes on to tell a funny anecdote about how the meeting actually played out. The meeting might've sounded "nice" from Mortensen's POV as a potential star, but for X-Men director Bryan Singer it sounds like a nightmare. Apparently, Viggo's son Henry kept checking Singer on all the concept art and story concepts that didn't jibe with X-Men comic book canon:

"But I did take [my son] Henry to the meeting I had with the director for [X-Men]. And it was in LA, and he had the models and figures and things ready for what he was going to do. Well, I asked, I said 'Can I bring my son? He's ten, he knows a lot about this and that's his favorite comic book character at the moment, Wolverine, he knows everything. So I'd love to bring him, as my sort of good luck charm and guide. And in the back of my mind, I was thinking 'And you might learn something.' Because I did let Henry read [the script] and he was like 'This is wrong. This is wrong. That's not how it is.' And so we went and I said 'Be polite.' And they gave me a tour and showed me all the drawings - it was a very nice conversation."

As Mortensen describes it when his son spoke up about the changes the movie made to X-Men comics canon, Singer was "falling all over himself and kind of the rest of the meeting was him explaining in detail to Henry why he was taking certain liberties."

In the end, Mortensen decided that the potential demands of the larger X-Men movie franchise were not something he wanted to hang his hat on, and he passed on the Wolverine role. It's an ironic story, actually: on the one hand, Viggo Mortensen was right to be concerned - after all, Hugh Jackman was locked into the Wolverine role for seventeen years, with roles and/or appearances in ten X-Men movies. So it's an understatement to say that Viggo Mortensen would've been signing up for a very long-term commitment.

However, on the other hand, Viggo held on X-Men just to wind up starring in the Lord of the Rings franchise a year later - a commitment that took up about five years of his life and still follows him to this day. But since Viggo says he connected to the Tolkein material better, it seems like he made the right choice.

The X-Men Movies are streaming on Disney+. The Lord of the Rings movies are streaming on HBO Max.