Aragorn actor recalls his experience in The Lord of the Rings: He suffered from terrible vertigo

One of actor Viggo Mortensen's most famous roles is Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings. In fact, his performance is more than what we see. Recently, Mortensen talked about his experience with vertigo while filming the film, as well as his experience during a key shot in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.

In an interview, Mortensen said that he rarely suffers from vertigo, but he encountered this condition during the filming of the Battle of Helm's Deep in "The Lord of the Rings 2: The Two Towers". When he was filming a shot of climbing a building to invade the orc position, he had symptoms of vertigo. After Mortensen climbed the wall, he began to feel dizzy and he could not move or get down from the scene.

"My first serious bout of vertigo [as an adult] was during the filming of The Lord of the Rings. I was doing a scene, the Battle of Helm's Deep, and these scenes were all at night, and it was raining. There were steps about a foot wide, with no handrails, that went up to the wall. And in this scene I had to fight my way up, trying to get to the top. There were orcs in full armor coming down. I had to fight my way through them. There was one that was throwing a spear from the side, and I had to jump over it and swing through it and make my way forward."

"I did two or three takes. Then they said, 'We want to do one more take, but we're going to take a break.' And everybody rushed down. I turned around and started to go down the stairs. But then [the vertigo] came. It was really bad. I couldn't move. People were still waiting. The orcs were passing me. I just leaned against the wall. I just looked at the night sky. I couldn't look down."

Mortensen said he was so nervous that all he could do was curl up like a spider and cling to the wall. Other actors who had come out of the building surrounded him, and people on the ground were asking, "Viggo, are you okay?"

All Mortensen could do was stand there and try to relax. "It was so scary, I was actually thinking... I don't even want to go down there," he said. "Not to mention I had to deal with all these stairs. I don't know how I made it through, but it was just horrible."

Mortensen is currently promoting his new film Falling, his directorial debut, for which he also stars and wrote the screenplay and music.