LOTR question, no spoilers . . .

[XMan]

I heard that Stuart Townsend (Lestat in Queen of the Damned) was originally tapped to play Aragorn, but they replaced him with Viggo Mortensen at the last minute?

Ugh, what might have been . . . a tragedy was averted. IE - I think Stuart Townsend is a wretchedly horrible actor.

 

[kami]

Yes it's true. IIRC, they fired Townsend because of some disagreements between him and PJ himself (or the whole production as a whole) also maybe because he looked too young (Aragorn was 80 years old at the time you know, but of course because of the numenor blood he still looked pretty good).
Viggo was hired literally last minute. He read LOTR on his way to New Zealand!

Townsend was apparently pretty pissed off about it as well.

Thank God they canned him. Viggo did an awesome job, the other guy would've funked it up.

 

[Mucman]

Yeah, Viggo did an awesome job! I heard we was so into his roll that he would walk around his sword attached to his belt at all times, even during snack breaks!

 

[GingerSynapse]

Originally posted by: Mucman
Yeah, Viggo did an awesome job! I heard we was so into his roll that he would walk around his sword attached to his belt at all times, even during snack breaks!

And even during restroom breaks? Yow, that could be dangerous!

I agree about Viggo vs. Stuart. It's good that things turned out well, because the miscasting of Aragorn could have wrecked things.