Mads key to Star Wars puzzle
Hollywood is going mad for Mads Mikkelsen. Josh Rottenberg finds out why.
Adecade or so ago, around the time he landed the role of the villain Le Chiffre in the James Bond film Casino Royale, Mads Mikkelsen made his first trip to Los Angeles to try to find an American agent.
Having already established a successful acting career in his native Denmark, he figured it was time to see what the Hollywood thing was all about.
‘‘It was a different world,’’ Mikkelsen remembers. ‘‘Everywhere I went, it was like, ‘I love everything you do! It’s so great! It’s awesome! You’re beautiful! Um, what’s your name again?’ It was like, ‘Seriously? You’re using all these words and you don’t even know my name?’’’
Suffice it to say, with prominent roles in two of the most anticipated films of late 2016 – the Marvel comic-book movie Doctor Strange and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – Mikkelsen has a different experience when he comes to town these days.
Long respected among aficionados of European cinema as a versatile, magnetic actor in films like Pusher, The Hunt and A Royal Affair, Mikkelsen, 51, has carved out a somewhat improbable niche in recent years as one of Hollywood’s go-to baddies.
After breaking out in 2006’s Casino Royale, he starred for three seasons as the suave serial killer Hannibal Lecter in the TV series Hannibal and attracted an intensely devoted fan base – no mean feat for someone whose character literally eats people.
Given Mikkelsen’s ability to blend cool sophistication and steely menace, it was only a matter of time before the chance to play a comic-book villain presented itself.
In Doctor Strange, Mikkelsen portrays Kaecilius, a sorcerer who threatens to unleash a dark supernatural force on the world for what he sees as the greater good of humankind.
‘‘Obviously his means are not the same as people with morals would have, but his goal itself is not stupid, you know?’’ Mikkelsen says. ‘‘He wants to make the world a better place. That’s a good start for villains.’’
It’s no great mystery to Mikkelsen why he’s become a magnet for bad-guy roles. ‘‘Playing the hero, you have to be allamerican – and I’m not,’’ he says. ‘‘People over here tend to see something they like and they want to copy that. It used to be the Brits who were playing the baddies and now it’s the Scandies.’’
He shrugged. ‘‘I can only embrace that,’’ he went on. ‘‘If the alternative is not to work here, I’ll take a bad guy any time. I’ve got plenty of opportunities to do other things back home.’’
Indeed, in Denmark, Mikkelsen has played a range of characters, including sympathetic ones. In 2012’s The Hunt, he portrayed a gentle kindergarten teacher falsely accused of paedophilia in a performance that won him the best actor prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
That same year, he starred in the sumptuous period drama Royal Affair, playing 18th-century German Danish doctor Johann Friedrich Struensee, who tried to institute political reforms to bring Denmark into the modern age but was brought down by a scandalous affair with the country’s queen.
In the deadpan 2015 black comedy Men & Chicken, he was unrecognisable as a nerdy, mustachioed oddball who uncovers some bizarre secrets in his dysfunctional family.
In fact, until fairly recently, the idea of starring in big Hollywood movies was never on Mikkelsen’s radar at all. ‘‘It was never something I was going for 100 per cent,’’ says the actor, who lives with his wife and two children in Copenhagen. ‘‘It was never a dream.’’
Even as the American film industry has come calling, the actor, who served on the jury at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, has kept one foot firmly planted in the world of European cinema.
Though a film like Doctor Strange, with its Cgi-drenched spectacle, couldn’t be further removed from Danish cinema’s often rigorous adherence to naturalism, Mikkelsen is happy to move back and forth between those extremes.
‘‘We don’t make films like these back home and I’m very fortunate to have the chance to do both,’’ he says. ‘‘Being in the same kind of atmosphere for many years makes
Ayou worn out and uninspired. Doing this for five years, I might miss just sitting in a kitchen having a conversation [on-screen] that’s very subtle and dramatic. And if I’ve done that for five years I might really miss swinging around with a sword in my hand.’’
Or a light saber, as the case may be.
For the moment, Mikkelsen is keeping his role in the next Star Wars film – the first in a series of planned standalone stories, this one set shortly before the events of 1977’s A New Hope – under wraps. It has been revealed that Mikkelsen’s character is the father of Felicity Jones’ heroine, Jyn Erso, and it has been strongly hinted that he plays some kind of role in the development of the Death Star.
‘‘He’s not a classical villain but he does bad things – or does he?’’ Mikkelsen says coyly. ‘‘He’s a brilliant man in a situation that’s very, very difficult. It’s a dilemma no one wants to be in. He’s a very important piece in the puzzle of how the drama of the whole series can escalate.’’ Asked whether his character crosses paths with Darth Vader, Mikkelsen laughs and shakes his head. ‘‘No, no, I can’t tell you. We’ll end up in a lake somewhere.’’ – Los Angeles Times
Doctor Strange Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
screening. (M) is now
(TBC) opens in New Zealand cinemas on December 15.