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Viggo Mortensen is opening up about his decision to turn down the role of Wolverine in the X-Men franchise and what happened in his meeting with director Bryan Singer.

The 62-year-old actor said that he brought his son Henry, now 33, to the meeting as he was a big comic book fan.

While part of the reason for Viggo turning down the role was so that he was not tied to one role for years, he also said his son was not a fan of the film’s vision.

“The thing that bothered me at the time was just the commitment of endless movies of that same character over and over,” Viggo said on MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast with Josh Horowitz. “I was nervous about that. And also there were some things, I mean they straightened most of them out, but I did take Henry to the meeting I had with the director as my sort of good luck charm and guide. In the back of my mind I was thinking he could learn something too, because I did let Henry read the script and he goes ‘This is wrong. That’s not how it is.’”

Viggo Mortensen with his son Henry in 2019

“And [Henry] goes, ‘Yeah, but he doesn’t look like this.’ And all of a sudden the director is falling all over himself and then the rest of the meeting was him explaining in detail to Henry why he was taking certain liberties. We walked out of there, and Henry asks if he will change the things he told him about, and I say, ‘I don’t think so.’ I’m not going to do it anyway, because I’m not sure I want to be doing this for years, and then a couple of years later I’m doing three Lord of the Rings, so who knows,” Viggo added.

Viggo recently defended playing a gay man in his new movie.

Halle Berry is on the cover of Variety‘s latest issue, out now.

Here’s what the 54-year-old Academy Award-winning actress had to say…

On her experience working with Bryan Singer on X-Men: “Bryan’s not the easiest dude to work with. I mean, everybody’s heard the stories — I don’t have to repeat them — and heard of his challenges, and what he struggles with. I would sometimes be very angry with him. I got into a few fights with him, said a few cuss words out of sheer frustration. When I work, I’m serious about that. And when that gets compromised, I get a little nutty. But at the same time, I have a lot of compassion for people who are struggling with whatever they’re struggling with, and Bryan struggles.”

On Catwoman: “The story didn’t feel quite right. I remember having that argument: ‘Why can’t Catwoman save the world like Batman and Superman do? Why is she just saving women from a face cream that cracks their face off?’ But I was just the actor for hire. I wasn’t the director. I had very little say over that.”

On a failed Bond spinoff for Berry’s character Jinx: “It was very disappointing. It was ahead of its time. Nobody was ready to sink that kind of money into a Black female action star. They just weren’t sure of its value. That’s where we were then.”

Another X-Men star came forward with their own experience of working with the director.

For more from Halle Berry, head to Variety.com.

Michael Jackson had X-Men ambitions.

The late pop icon’s film aspirations were explored in a new THR cover story about Bryan Singer‘s 2000 movie, X-Men.

According to the report, Michael was interested in playing Professor Xavier in the film – and had no issue with wearing makeup to play the role of an older white character.

“In the spring of 1999, Bryan Singer and a group of X-Men producers and crew were working out of the old Fox offices near Olympic and Bundy when Michael Jackson walked in the door. Wearing sunglasses and refusing to shake hands, Jackson was visiting the industrial space to meet with Singer to discuss the prospect of playing Professor Xavier in the upcoming film. ‘I said to him, ‘Do you know Xavier is an older white guy?” X-Men producer Lauren Shuler Donner recalls. ‘And Michael said, ‘Oh yeah. You know, I can wear makeup.”

From there, Michael opened up an “elaborate presentation complete with the short film Ghosts, in which the pop star morphed into a 60-something white mayor railing against a well-meaning performer who entertains local children with magic tricks.”

Twentieth Century Fox “never seriously considered Jackson for the role, which eventually went to Patrick Stewart in a turn that enabled him to be known for a popular character other than Star Trek‘s Captain Picard.”

“Michael was already in the thick of all his allegations by X-Men,” a former executive added.

The upcoming X-Men spin-off movie The New Mutants is still scheduled to be released in theaters on August 28 – watch the opening scene!

Olivia Munn is describing what it was like working with disgraced director Bryan Singer on the set of her first X-Men movie.

“It’s possible [to work with women directors]. It’s the problem that I always had in this business, way before the #MeToo movement exposed so much. You’re in it and you see these people who keep failing up, and they’re not that great and you think, ‘Really?’ When we shot ‘X-Men,’ I never shot a huge movie like that before. I didn’t know what was right or wrong, but I did know that it seems strange that Bryan Singer could check out and say he had a thyroid issue,” Olivia told Variety. “Instead of going to a doctor in Montreal, which is a very high-level, working city, he said he had to go to L.A. And he was gone for about 10 days is my recollection. And he said, ‘Continue. Keep filming.’ We’d be on set, I remember there’s a big scene that we’d have, and we’d come back from lunch and then one of Bryan’s assistants would come up and show us a cell phone with a text message on it.”

Olivia added, “And he texted to the actors, ‘Hey guys. I’m busy right now. But just go ahead and start filming without me.’ And we’d be like, ‘OK.’ And I never thought any of it was normal, but I didn’t realize that other people also thought it wasn’t normal. And the other people who thought it wasn’t normal would be people at high levels, people who make decisions on whether to hire this person.”

She continued, “Come to find out it is really strange and it wasn’t OK. But this person is allowed to continue to go on. Fox still gives him Bohemian Rhapsody, and then we all know what happened.”

Olivia also said, “I think that if we made way for more of those people and held people accountable, there’s so many great human beings out there and directors and artists. It’s not just with women but with minorities. And representation matters. You don’t know if things are possible until you see other people doing it.”

Bryan Singer has been replaced as the director of the upcoming film Red Sonja amid ongoing allegations of sexual misconduct involving underage boys.

The 53-year-old director was replaced by Transparent creator Jill Soloway, according to The Hollywood Reporter on Friday (June 21).

PHOTOS: Check out the latest pics of Bryan Singer

The film was put on hold in February after The Atlantic published a story in which multiple accusers came forward and claimed Bryan raped them while underage.

Bryan‘s lawyer told the publication that he “categorically denies ever having sex with, or a preference for, underage men.”

Red Sonja is an adaptation of the comic book, following a vengeful warrior known as a “She-Devil with a sword.”

Bryan Singer has agreed to pay $150,000 to Cesar Sanchez-Guzman, who accused the director of raping him in 2003 when he was just 17.

Sanchez-Guzman filed the lawsuit in December 2017 and alleged that Singer performed oral sex on him against his will and also anally penetrated him.

Singer denies the allegations and still maintains his innocence. The accuser filed for bankruptcy back in 2014 and the case was discharged, but later reopened to include his claim against the director as an asset. Proceeds from the lawsuit would go to his creditors.

“The debtor filed a claim against Mr. Singer that he had no basis or legal right to file,” Singer‘s attorney Andrew Brettler said in a statement to Variety. “Mr. Singer has denied even knowing this individual, let alone allegedly having interacted with him more than 15 years ago. The decision to resolve the matter with the bankruptcy trustee was purely a business one, as litigation costs would well exceed the amount requested by the trustee to pay off the creditors who were owed money when the debtor filed for bankruptcy.”

$61,000 will go to creditors and additional funds will be used to pay for “administration of the case.” Sanchez-Guzman will received the rest of the funds.

An actor from the Fifty Shades franchise came out earlier this year with his own story about Bryan Singer.

Ian McKellen is apologizing after he made a controversial comment in which he suggested that Kevin Spacey and Bryan Singer allegedly committed abuse because they were “in the closet.”

The legendary actor, who is openly gay, made the comments while speaking on the #QueerAF podcast.

“Most of them were in the closet. Hence, all their problems as people and their relationship with other people,” Ian said. “If they had been able to be open about themselves and their desires, they wouldn’t have started abusing people in the way they’ve been accused.”

Ian added that it’s “debatable” if accused individuals like Spacey and Singer should be “forced to stop working.”

“I rather think that’s up to the public,” he said. “Do you want to see someone who has been accused of something that you don’t approve of again? If the answer’s no, then you won’t buy a ticket, you won’t turn on the television. But there may be others for who that’s not a consideration. And it’s difficult to be exactly black and white.”

Ian later issued a statement to apologized for what he said.

“As part of an extended podcast recently, I suggested that if closeted people were instead open about their sexuality they wouldn’t abuse others. That, of course, is wrong,” he said (via Entertainment Tonight).

“My intention was to encourage the LGBT audience I was addressing to be proud and open about their sexuality,” he added. “In doing so, my point was clumsily expressed. I would never, ever trivialize or condone abuse of any kind. I deeply regret my careless remarks and apologize unreservedly for any distress I caused.”