Lone star; You starred in the Lord Of The Rings movies, which made

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Apr 11, 2004 | by Peter Ross

He regards the lengthy shoot as "going to school for two years". It gave him a chance to bone up on subjects that already interested him - "Celtic mythology, literary tradition and history, and especially the Nordic sagas". He has a degree in Spanish and government but displays exactly the kind of bulimic desire to stuff himself with facts that you get with the most insecure of autodidacts.

"Interesting" is his favourite word. He treats films as research projects, which is how he approaches his art, too. One recent photo- book, Miyelo, is a series of spectral images of a Ghost Dance, the Native American religious ceremony which prompted the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, depicted in Hidalgo. Mortensen pulls a copy of this book from an All Blacks bag and talks me through the photographs. He's much more animated when talking about length of exposure than when discussing his movies.

According to Stephen Cole, whose Los Angeles gallery exhibited the Miyelo photographs, "his acting work is what subsidises his ability to continue his art". As well as photographing and painting, he writes poetry and plays music with the former Guns'n'Roses guitarist Buckethead.

Mortensen was into all this stuff long before he became famous. Now he worries that his celebrity may colour the way the public respond to his art. At a recent poetry reading, 1000 people turned up, and you can't help but feel that most of them were there to see Aragorn in the flesh rather than hear what that mumbly guy with the weird chin had to say. "That does concern him," confirms Cole, "and that's why he keeps his artistic life separate, although he is the same person so they can't be totally separated. He is very clear about not publicising the art in celebrity publications, although most do reference it."

For the most part, Mortensen's friends are not famous. He is easier in the company of the artists, writers and musicians who inhabit bohemian Los Angeles. His former wife Exene Cervenka, mother of Henry, used to sing in the LA punk band X; a recent girlfriend, Lola Schnabel, is the daughter of the painter and film director Julian Schnabel, and an artist in her own right. Mortensen published a book by her.

He co-runs the independent Perceval Press with editor Pilar Perez, its mission to publish books by artists, poets, writers and photographers that might otherwise have trouble getting into the public arena. Perceval has a political edge. One recent release is Twilight Of Empire: Responses To Occupation, a collection of essays about the war on Iraq and its aftermath. According to the Perceval website, the book is "an unflinching look at the corporate greed and manipulation at the bottom of what may be the most bungled foreign policy project in United States history."

Mortensen is certainly no fan of the Bush administration and its policies. He was alarmed that some people were inclined to regard the story of the third Lord Of The Rings film, The Return Of The King, as a straightforward tale of good versus evil, and thus a perfect metaphor for the conflict between America and Iraq. He felt the film was being hijacked as a propaganda tool and started appearing on chat shows wearing a T-shirt with the slogan "War is not the answer". He is not unaware that Hidalgo, which was made before war was declared, could be equally wilfully misread: a cowboy goes to Iraq and shows the natives a thing or two; what could be clearer?