ISOLATION FANTASY

Mads Mikkelsen tells a strange story about growing up in Copenhagen, Denmark. He would head off into the woods alone, “as far as I could go.” And then he would sit down among the trees and take stock.

“If I don’t get up, no one will find me,” he remembers thinking. The outdoors offered perspective. “Being insignificant is interesting; it takes a lot of weight off your shoulders.”

He’s still not certain why he did it. “Maybe there’s a psychiatrist who could tell you,” he chuckles. “But I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of being dumped in a Canadian forest somewhere.”

Mikkelsen’s wish more or less came true while filming Arctic, a survival story set in the Far North. The location was Iceland, subbing for Canada, and far above the tree line, so more tundra than forest. But that sense of “no one will find me” was critical to his performance.

His character — the name Overgård is stitched on his parka, but that’s about all we know about him — is alone, struggling to survive after a plane crash. He eventually runs into another survivor even worse off that he is.

“That was by far the most magical thing I’ve done with any actor,” he says of working with his costar, Marla Thelma Smáradóttir. “I was alone so long in the prep and the shooting period. I was bouncing the ball and the ball never returned.

“And suddenly it did return. It was not a fastball; it was a slow little role. It was a blessing that she came along. On a professional level, it’s nice to have someone to spar with.”

Arctic, which had its world premiere at the Cannes film festival last year, is the feature debut of writer Ryan Morrison and director Joe Penna. It was originally pitched as a survivor-on-Mars story, until Ridley Scott’s The Martian stole that thunder. But Mikkelsen prefers the earthbound setting, without “this science-fiction wall between you and the real world.”