Mads Mikkelsen
Mads Mikkelsen
Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen; born 22 November 1965) is a Danish actor. Originally a gymnast and dancer, he began his career as an actor in 1996. He rose to fame in Denmark as Tonny the drug dealer in the first two films of the Pusher film trilogy, and in his role as the brash yet sensitive policeman, Allan Fischer, in Peter Thorsboe's Danish television series Rejseholdet...
NationalityDanish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth22 November 1965
CityCopenhagen, Denmark
CountryDenmark
If you're playing the bad guy, you have to find what you like about them.
Sometimes we misunderstand what films can do. We just throw a whole book in there, with people just talking, talking, and talking. The picture can tell, the frame can tell.
I take my work enormously seriously. When I do something it has to feel right. Everything has to be right. I'm not ambitious about my career, but I am ambitious with each job. I can be fairly annoying to work with. No compromises. Let's put it this way: compromises are from hell.
I'd rather be voted 'the sexiest man in Denmark' than 'the ugliest man in Denmark'.
Sometimes you're trying your best and you still can't find a solution, but I try not to waste my life living in a dark place.
I think the meaning of life is life itself. We don't necessarily want to know what it is, but we want to live it. Hopefully, we'll go out fast without knowing it.
There's been no real reason to move to LA. The stuff I've done for America has been done in Europe anyway. We made a decision early on that we'd find our base and not shake the children's world as much as mine.
I love working back home, but it is a small country, and we do get tired of watching each other.
I think 40 years ago, it would have been a little bit different because people had a tendency to think the actor was their part. I do find people who, all of a sudden, realize who is sitting in the restaurant and the first thing they react on is not necessarily, "There's that actor," but it's, "There's that killer guy."
I ask a million questions, and I insist on having answers. I think that is what we have to do. I have to know what the director wants. Some are very much in their head, and I need to force it out of them. I just can't play around for eight hours and see if something happens.
I have a three-piece suit. I’m an art collector. I have a funny accent. So I’m probably the killer.
I can be intense in a lot of ways, but not the way you see the guy in 'The Salvation.'
I'm a beer man. I tried to drink whiskey and Scotch but I don't get it. It smells like a girl who didn't shower and just splashed a lot of perfume on.
I do read some of the scripts from America and, even though the themes or subject of the film is very interesting, and some of the scenes are very interesting, there is a tendency that they have to explain everything. There will be no dilemma. This guy was evil, and this girl was very sweet. And in the end, we'd have to see eight endings because we'd also have to know what happened to the uncle. It's like, "Are you kidding me?!"