Early Life
Mortensen was born in New York City. His mother, Grace Gamble (née Atkinson), was American, and his father, Viggo Peter Mortensen, Sr., was Danish; the two met in Norway. His maternal grandfather was from Nova Scotia, Canada, and his maternal grandmother's family was from New England.
The family moved to Venezuela, then Denmark, and eventually settled in Argentina, taking residency in the Argentine provinces of Córdoba, Chaco and Buenos Aires, where he attended primary school and acquired fluent Spanish, while his father managed chicken farms and ranches. They remained there until Mortensen was eleven, when his parents divorced. With his mother he returned to New York, where he spent the rest of his childhood, graduating from Watertown High School in Watertown, New York.
He then attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, earning a degree in 1980. Afterward, he went to Europe and lived in Spain, England, and Denmark, where he took various jobs such as driving a truck in Esbjerg and selling flowers in Copenhagen. After two years, he returned to the United States to pursue an acting career.
Read more about this topic: Viggo Mortensen
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