Meeting a Debutante Horse While Shooting the Lord of the Rings, Aragorn Actor Eventually Fell in Love With It, Once

More than two decades ago, Peter Jackson took upon the herculean task of adapting JRR Tolkien’s magnum opus into a live-action thriller. Thus, one of the highest-grossing movie trilogy with $3 billion worldwide sales, was born. Filled with horseriding and sword fights and countless orcs, The Lord of the Rings truly captivated the hearts and minds of its fans permanently. One of the most beloved characters from the franchise was Aragorn, played by Danish actor Viggo Mortensen.

Mortensen had a fair bit of horseriding scenes in the films. He met a horse, who had never been part of a movie set before, and by the end of it, he developed such a strong bond with him, that he wanted to keep it.

Viggo Mortensen’s horse wasn’t very pleased initially to be in front of the camera

In a YouTube video from 2019, titled “Home of the Horse Lords”, several members of the Lord of the Rings cast and crew shed light on the horses used in the movie trilogy. They shared their experiences riding a horse, how the trainers helped them with it, and more details about the horse themselves. Viggo Mortensen too shared his experience of meeting his horse for the first time during the shoot.

He said, “A day or two before I am suddenly introduced to this new horse who’s never been on a movie set. He did kind of freak out the first day”. Mortensen admitted that it took time for him and the horse to get acquainted. It was of utmost importance that they feel familiar, since the character of Aragorn, a ranger from the North and the king of Gondor, is an expert horserider.

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He continued, “We got the shots but I don’t think he was happy about it, I felt about it”. Mortensen could feel that his horse kept feeling uncomfortable during the initial course of the shoot, given that it was the horse’s first time in front of the camera. However, things would change for the better.

Mortensen owes his horseriding skills to the bond he developed with his horse

Even though the horse was a debutante, it was trained thoroughly before Viggo Mortensen met it. Despite that, acclimatization took time for the two, until Mortensen could sense the pain of the horse. It was a Dutch Warmblood breed of a horse named Uraeus. With time, it learned the tricks and trade of shooting very quickly and so did Mortensen as a horserider. Mortensen also said that Uraeus was “physically strong and strong-minded as well”.

After the shoot wrapped up, Viggo Mortensen bought the horse for himself. During the long course of the film, Mortensen also rode another horse, a chestnut named Kenny, and bought it too. Since the entire trilogy was filmed in New Zealand, and Mortensen is from Denmark, he couldn’t bring the horses with him to his home country, or to LA, where he works. This was the same reason Harrison Ford couldn’t bring his favorite horse Hurricane from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade film shoot, as the horse was from Spain.

Viggo Mortensen, though, keeps visiting his both co-stars i.e. the horses, in New Zealand, where they are kept with a veterinarian.

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