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
I did a TV show called 'Unit 1.' It wasn't a bad experience, but yes, the first season I didn't have a good time because I was coming from Nicolas Winding Refn films where the corners were sharp and radical, but now we had round corners.
If I was doing 'The Hunt' constantly, I would get very old, very fast.
I fancy myself at being pretty good at understanding a script and finding the weaknesses, and then making them more radical than they are. People tend to listen to me.
When I do outdoor scenes, I tend to find a quiet space where I can sit and carve a walking stick that can turn out to be interesting for me.
We have no chance to comprehend what goes on there - it's so dramatic, and people are so poor. We all felt bad about being there. Filming in India felt like we were going to borrow something knowing that we were never going to give it back.
I don't wear cologne. I do occasionally, but anytime I take a shower, I just put on deodorant. That's basically what I smell like.
I don't want to be the stupid blond. I want to be an actor.
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.
If you have to be frightening, you need some actors around you to be really frightened. And if they're not frightened, you're not so frightening anymore. In the same way, people say, 'I think you come in, and you're really sexy'. But how do you play sexy? It depends on the eyes that are looking.
I've never been specifically attached to westerns, but there are those I like - one of the best westerns I've seen is 'Unforgiven.' I think the genre has something extremely powerful that can allow them to talk about good and evil in a very straight way.
We can ask ourselves why we invent God, and then, ten minutes later, we invent Satan - why? Because we need him; there's something fascinating about the other side of the coin.
We were in love with 'Mean Streets' and 'Taxi Driver.' We had no idea why nothing remotely like that was done in Denmark.
First, I have to read something and find it interesting and like the story. If I don't understand it fully, but there is something in there that is interesting, then it takes a director to convince me. If he can't do that, then I don't go with it. It doesn't matter where the project comes from.
TV is obviously so different from film: because it's a never-ending process, it keeps going; you keep receiving new pages.