I had read enough on the plane to see that the character had misgivings about the burden of the undertaking. He feels the weight of other people’s expectations; it’s one thing for someone to tell you that you’re capable but it’s quite another for you to know it yourself. I felt that in Aragorn, and I felt it too as an actor: ‘You’ve hired me ‘cos you think I can do it but privately I’m not sure’.”That ambivalence must be interesting to play, I suggest “Well, you don’t consciously play that, or anything else. ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m playing ignorance.’” He unleashes his mighty laugh “It’s just that Aragorn is not quite sure Not that you play being unsure either.” He stops and thinks. “You just ask yourself: what are you sure about? And you find there’s a lot missing.”Some of the film’s publicity has focused on Mortensen’s immersion in his role as some manifestation of actorly eccentricity: “It was rumoured he was living in the forest in Aragorn’s torn, mud-stained clothes!” whoops the writer of the press kit, while stories of Mortensen camping out under the stars, refusing to remove his sword from his back during mealtimes, and requesting that a displaced tooth be glued back into his mouth, have begun doing the rounds.

But when you meet Mortensen, these anecdotes seem not only plausible but logical. Of course it would make sense to sleep in the forest to play a child of nature, just as he trained alone, rather than with his co-stars, in preparation for his role as Demi Moore’s sadistic sergeant in GI Jane, the better to comprehend his character’s sense of isolation.”I thought of the New Zealand landscape as one of my acting partners,” he says “Those forests and mountains – Aragorn knows them. He understands the language of the birds and beasts.” He takes a long drag on his cigarette. “He has a special reverence for trees.”You sense that what Mortensen prizes in Aragorn, he prizes in himself. When he tells me that Aragorn understands the value of “stretching yourself, being passionate about other cultures and languages”, I discern only the thinnest of veils separating observation from autobiography. Mortensen does, after all, speak three languages, having lived in Venezuela, Argentina and Denmark after a childhood spent in Manhattan with his Danish mother and American father.One crucial difference is that Aragorn is an autonomous, unfettered individual, whereas Mortensen has always wrestled with the fact that whatever he does as an actor, whatever heights he reaches, he will always, come post-production, be the subject of a director’s whims and fancies.”Like it or not,” he wrote back in 1995, “for most of the people involved, their job is completed by others in the windowless rooms of editing bays and sound stages.” It’s getting easier for him now “I used to be very bothered. Now I have to consciously say: it’s what I did that matters, and walk away.”His work in GI Jane was brave – he brought understatement to the kind of role that offers grandstanding opportunities on a silver platter.

But he seemed swamped by the hyperbolic excesses of that superficial film. Conversely, he can appear in a movie for no more than 10 minutes – his whimpering informer in Carlito’s Way (1993) or blithely arrogant sportswear magnate in Daylight (1996) – and steal it from beneath the noses of the leads.”I just try to find something interesting until I run out of money,” he says candidly. “And then I have to find the best from whatever I’m lucky enough to get Daylight was a case in point. But once you do something, no matter what your reasons, it’s your responsibility to give your best work.