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Actor Viggo Mortensen professed his love for the Montreal Canadiens hockey team for the whole country to see when he accepted his Best Actor Genie Award on Thursday March 8, 2012. Mortensen won the award for playing Sigmund Freud in David Cronenberg’s film A Dangerous Method.



Mortensen uses the flag as a kind of fashion accessory in the photo directly above, while in our feature photo he unfurls it with help from Philippe Falardeau, prize-winning director of Monsieur Lazhar. (Too bad their good fortune couldn’t rub off on the team somehow.)

Mortensen’s love for the Canadiens goes waaaay back – to the 1970s.

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A fan page called Viggo-Works.comhas this quote from him: “When I moved up to northern New York in 1970, we didn’t have Internet or cable TV. I would listen to Canadiens games on Radio-Canada, which is actually how I started learning French; watching Montreal play in the early ‘70s is when I really started to learn about hockey. My favorite player was always Guy Lafleur.!”

On that same fan page, Mortensen confirmed the rumour that he wore a Habs jersey under his armour while filming Lord of The Rings.

When A Dangerous Method was presented at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2011, Mortensen brought Guy Lafleur’s No. 10 jersey to the press conference.

A Cine Files post written thenhas more information about Mortensen and links to articles on the web sites of the CBC and the British newspaper The Independent.

All three photos on this page are by Mark Blinch/ Reuters