For an acting career that started with 1985’s Witness, the 65-year-old Viggo Mortensen has truly come a long way. With a series of star-studded roles trailing right behind him to remind everyone of the legacy he has led so far like as Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings saga, he is easily one of the most commended and respected celebrities in the entertainment industry.
But despite having scored some of the best roles of all time, Mortensen also felt gutted over some roles that ended up choosing other actors over him. Like 1986’s classic action-war masterpiece Platoon, which originally cast him before switching over to Willem Dafoe to replace him — the same film that Keanu Reeves also turned down for being a bit too violent for him.
Viggo Mortensen was Gutted Over Being Fired from Platoon
During a recent interview for The Independent’s Go to Bat series, the iconic LOTR star came clean about a lot of things about his career. One of these included him candidly revealing how he was originally cast in 1986’s Platoon but was replaced by another actor as soon as the film received “a bigger budget.”
Confessing how he scored it, Viggo Mortensen said:
I auditioned on video tape and I got the role that eventually Willem Dafoe ended up playing. I assumed I had that role.
For those who may be unversed, the role was that of the platoon’s Sergeant Elias who, along with the soldiers in his platoon patrol, deals with the blood and sweat in the jungles of Vietnam in the film.
Since he already assumed that he had the role, Mortensen even went to extremes to prepare for it. This included him spending “a year reading every possible thing about Vietnam” and even considering “join(ing) the army for a short while” to make himself better suited for the role while the higher-ups navigated their way through the budget.
However, it wasn’t until one headline caught his eye in the newspaper — ‘Oliver Stone’s making this movie with Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe’ — that the Green Book star realized that his hard work had actually been all for nothing, and he had actually been replaced by Willem Dafoe, who was riding high tides of fame after coming off To Live and Die in L.A.
This was because the film had garnered a greater budget than it intended to, and since Dafoe held a lot more star power than Mortensen back then, the Captain Fantastic star was shown his way out.
Even when he tried to negotiate, saying, “Could I do another audition to prove it? ‘Cause I know even more now than when I got the part,” filmmaker Oliver Stone‘s response was, “No it’s not gonna happen.” Simply said, he had lost out on his role and was ostensibly gutted over it back then.
But while Mortensen was trying so hard for it, another major actor had previously turned the film down due to its “violence” element: Keanu Reeves.
Ironically Enough, Keanu Reeves Turned Platoon Down Due to its Violence
According to what Oliver himself confessed during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Reeves was also considered for the role of Sergeant Elias. However:
Keanu turned it down because of the violence. He didn’t want to do violence.
Well, that’s something truly ironic to say for someone who went on to take on some really brutish roles along the lines of John Wick in the titular franchise and Neo in The Matrix saga and even earned high recognition and praise through the same.
But just like how Keanu Reeves turned it down and still managed to lead an incredibly successful career, Mortensen, too, seems to hold no regrets about losing that movie now.
As he continued to confess during his interview with The Independent:
I wouldn’t have done the other things I’d have done if that had happened – and if I had that sort of initial success, maybe I’d have go tired of the whole thing and quit.
Needless to say, that’s some die-hard optimism Mortensen has got about it all. That said, perhaps it was only for the better that things played out the way they did. After all, we’re truly grateful to have our Mortensen as Aragorn in the LOTR saga instead!
You can watch Platoon (1986) on Prime Video and The Lord of the Rings film series on Max.
