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Viggo and co-star 

You just can't fake this kind of friendship.

Cronenberg fave and practically Canadian thesp Viggo Mortensen and Aussie wunderkind Kodi Smit-McPhee are exchanging good-natured jabs and ribbing each other about who gets more female attention while sitting side-by-side in a Toronto hotel room talking about their TIFF 09 pic, The Road.

Despite the decidedly bleak tone of the film, based on Cormac McCarthy's novel, which follows Mortensen's The Man and Smit-McPhee's The Boy as they navigate a barren America in the wake of an unnamed atrocity, the two can't help but smile when talking about working together.

"Alternating beatings and cold showers," Mortensen deadpans when asked how they bonded before the shoot.

All joking aside, Smit-McPhee recalls them checking out the Bodies exhibit together while Mortensen reveals that he felt an inherent connection with the young actor early-on.

"I think just the way he got the role was part of it. They gave him a very difficult scene to do, and all the other boys that tried out for his part," he says. "Two scenes, the second of which was the last scene we have together in the movie, which is a big ask of any actor. If you could hack that, depending how you got through it and what you gave off as an actor, dealing with that stress, I guess that would be telling. I think the fact that we got through that somehow, and connected on some level in the audition, that already, for me, was the beginning."

"We didn't know each other but we trusted each other somehow, right?" he asks his co-star, who enthusiastically nods in agreement.

Watch the trailer

Director John Hillcoat also seems to be aware he stumbled onto something special when he cast the two leads, calling Smit-McPhee one of the film's gifts and seeing in Mortensen all the qualities needed for the difficult role.

"I was trying to figure out how the hell to cast this cause it needed someone who could pass as an 'Everyman' that had a range of emotion [and] I had seen in glimpses in other films and other performances that [Viggo] had [that]," he says. "The story in The Road, the man covers such a wide terrain, it's so raw and naked, emotionally. And very importantly, the physicality too, that there was a believability that his guy could actually go through this."

This, of course, is a harrowing pilgrimage through an ashen wasteland, dodging cannibals, extreme weather, the constant threat of starvation and distant memories of a now-dead world where the bond between father and son keeps both of them alive. That necessarily meant the on-screen connection had to be that much more convincing.

Mortensen, who has a 21-year-old son of his own, approached the material through the lens of a father, which quickly gave way to respect for his fellow actor.

"My point of entry was definitely understanding that idea," he says. "Having been a father, having a son, who, in some ways, is similar to Kodi, when he was Kodi's age. But after we started going...I mean, we're not flesh and blood and if it weren't for The Road, we might never have met and yet I've gotten close to Kodi and his family. We got through this together and the camera and the director - everything disappears when you're all the way in and committed and you take a leap of faith, which is what this movie is about. You're out at the end of the branch, but you're out there together."

--

The Road is screening during the Toronto International Film Festival, running to September 19.



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@tia_celeste - You never know! This might just be the role that gets it for him :) ^EB
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