Before he starred in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings series, Viggo Mortensen met with X-Men director Bryan Singer about playing Wolverine. He would ultimately choose to pass on the role, and now he's explained why.

　　Mortensen explained on the Happy Sad Confused podcast that he wasn't particularly enthusiastic about the job because it was a franchise gig. "The thing that bothered me at the time was just the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over," he said (via DigitalSpy). "I was nervous about that."

　　Mortensen would of course go on to star in The Lord of the Rings franchise as Aragorn across three instalments, but those movies were filmed back-to-back.

　　Mortensen took his son Henry to the meeting with Singer as his "good luck charm and guide." Henry was familiar with the comics and he informed his father that the script, which he also saw, was too far removed from the source material.

　　"I did let Henry read the script and he goes: 'This is wrong, that's not how it is,'" Mortensen said.

　　As Mortensen remembers it, Singer started "falling over himself" when Henry brought up his issues, and the rest of the meeting involved Singer explaining to the child "why he was taking certain liberties."

　　The role of Wolverine eventually went to Hugh Jackman who played the character in numerous movies over the years. Mortensen said Jackman did a great job with the character and delivered a performance better than anyone could.

　　Henry was also involved in his father's decision to play Aragorn. As Mortensen recalls in the bonus features of The Lord of the Rings, he was initially hesitant to play the central character in the fantasy series, in part due to his lack of familiarity with the fantasy series, but Henry was a big fan and convinced his dad to do it.