Mads Mikkelsen:“Sometimes You Just Want To Go Out Sword In Hand”

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, 55, might be the ultimate proof that it takes a good guy to play a really bad one. The king of the on-screen villain talks dance, booze and his most famous roles

- James Mottram

IT COULDN’T HAPPEN to a nicer guy. It’s a phrase that aptly fits Mads Mikkelsen, the Danish actor who has become the king of franchise films these past years. Already he’s played villains in James Bond film Casino Royale and Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Thomas Harris’ serial killer Hannibal Lecter in TV show Hannibal and the bloke who designed the Death Star in Star Wars spin-off Rogue One. “I grew up with big Hollywood films, watching them,” he says. “All of a sudden, I’m part of that. And I love that.”

Even this past lockdown year, Mikkelsen has been winning at life. “I was planning to learn a few languages. I never got around to it.” Instead, he played tennis, started building a summer cottage at his home in Copenhagen and bought a pet. “We spent a lot of time with a dog.” Married to choreographer Hanne Jacobsen since 2000, they’ve been together since 1987 (and have two children, Viola and Carl, in their twenties). “I’m pretty good at doing nothing,” he adds, “but a lot of things at the same time.”

We chat on Zoom, with Mikkelsen dressed in a neatly-pressed black shirt. His hair has blonde highlights, though his goatee is salt-and-pepper grey. He’s 55 now, his face full of character and nobility, but has absolutely no issue with sullying his looks on-screen—whether as 007’s scar-faced nemesis Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, or the one-eyed Viking in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Valhalla Rising. Mikkelsen is every performer’s dream: a character actor in a leading man’s body.