Mads Mikkelsen, In Conversation
April 22, 2021 1:23 AM   Subscribe

 
I saw this interview first on Mltshp.
posted by ellieBOA at 1:24 AM on April 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


Great timing! Just watched The Pusher for the first time, last night. Thank you for posting!
posted by stevedawg at 2:43 AM on April 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


The Pusher sequels are also pretty good if you liked the first one. I am a Mikkelsen fan, and he does do stuff besides the violent, but having said that, I am looking forward to his new one, which is Danish language and seems to be a return to the dead eyed purveyor of violence: Riders of Justice (YT trailer). I've struggled to get hold of his last one 'Another Round', which I understand to be more of a comedy/social commentary (and the director is Oscar nominated for it).
posted by biffa at 3:04 AM on April 22, 2021 [3 favorites]


I will watch pretty much anything he's in; his performances are captivating. I'll occasionally put on Valhalla Rising and just let it play in the background whilst I potter about doing chores.

Before the Hannibal series I thought it impossible for anyone to but Anthony Hopkins to inhabit that character; now There Is No Dr Lecter But Mads.
(Still holding out a forlorn hope that we'll see a S4.)

And after reading this I would love to see The Hunt with the ending he described.

The whole interview is great, but the last paragraph could be cross-stitched and hung on the wall:
My approach to what I do in my job — and it might even be the approach to my life — is that everything I do is the most important thing I do. Whether it’s a play or the next film. It is the most important thing. I know it’s not going to be the most important thing, and it might not be close to being the best, but I have to make it the most important thing. That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career. That’s a very big difference, because if I’m ambitious with my career, everything I do now is just stepping-stones leading to something — a goal I might never reach, and so everything will be disappointing. But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career. Big or small, we don’t know. But at least everything was important.
posted by myotahapea at 4:04 AM on April 22, 2021 [24 favorites]


i cut myself on his cheekbones just watching that video
posted by kokaku at 4:38 AM on April 22, 2021 [5 favorites]


He's great in Flickering Lights, which is both one of the dumbest and one of the funniest movies I've ever seen. (And it's 20 years old?? When did that happen?)
posted by orrnyereg at 6:05 AM on April 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


MeFi, you're the reason I met Mads Mikkelsen in the flesh when Hannibal was at its peak here on the Blue.

I STILL HAVE THE PICTURE (with him and Gillian Anderson)

That man is the epitome of Hot Dads Dot Com.
posted by Kitteh at 6:29 AM on April 22, 2021 [6 favorites]


I STILL HAVE THE PICTURE (with him and Gillian Anderson)

I would have zero chill if I met either of them and would be actively worried if I met both at the same time.

And yes, I'm in the same boat as most folks here; I'll watch anything he's in. He elevates any material (see: Polar). The quote above about how "everything I do is the most important thing I do" really does come across in his work. He's utterly committed in every role I've ever seen him in.
posted by slimepuppy at 6:41 AM on April 22, 2021 [4 favorites]


Two words: Valhalla Rising

Oh yeah, these two words also: The Door

Seeing a pattern here: The Hunt
posted by elkevelvet at 7:47 AM on April 22, 2021


My favourite anecdote about him on Hannibal regarded a scene where he tosses an egg in the air and cracks it on a spatula. Seems the production crew had laid on a gross of eggs and had some Benihana chefs in the wings ready to sub in if he couldn't get it right; Mads appears for the scene and proceeds to nail it perfectly on the first try. Everyone's in shock and he just shrugs and says he used to juggle in his younger days.
(Full story is in Janice Poon's blog and her "Feeding Hannibal" cookbook.)

i cut myself on his cheekbones just watching that video


I rarely get swoony over physical appearance, but I recall seeing some photos of him in his younger days and thinking "those images would impregnate anyone, regardless of gender, species or orientation".
posted by myotahapea at 7:48 AM on April 22, 2021 [6 favorites]


(It's just Pusher, no "the". We literally don't have a word for the in Danish, and the title isn't Pusheren which is how that would be rendered in Danish.)
posted by Dysk at 8:19 AM on April 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


I watched the first half hour of Pusher and turned it off for being too men doing violent things for my mood that day. Should I go back? I do usually love Mads and I'm not agin violence in movies as such - Valhalla Rising is a favourite film of mine, for example.
posted by hfnuala at 8:47 AM on April 22, 2021


Pusher is a great film if you can stomach the violence and Danebleak (as a Norwegian friend of mine calls the genre). The first sequel (Pusher 2) features a lot more of Mikkelsen. None of the series is positive or upbeat, none of it has anything positive or good to say about humanity or life. If that's not your bag, then Pusher probably won't be. It's like a film equivalent of harsh noise or the unfriendlier end of the industrial genre in music.
posted by Dysk at 9:00 AM on April 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


Oh his brother was Troels in Forbrydelsen?!!! That's so cool!
posted by stevil at 9:46 AM on April 22, 2021


Biffa: we were underwhelmed by Another Round (and we like the director) - the acting was great but the story just left us feeling...so, what? It's been so lauded maybe our expectations were too high.
posted by stevil at 9:48 AM on April 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


Oooh, I get to tell my Mads Mikkelsen anecdote. Unfortunately, I haven't met him. But. One day I rode a cab and chatted with the driver. When we arrived at the destination, he bubbled over: he really wanted to tell me that his son in law had landed a part in the new James Bond movie. But it was top secret.
He was the nicest person ever, and I promised to tell no no one. But I did tell one person, my sister, who unbeknown to me was an alcoholic and drug addict at the time, and sold the story to a tabloid because she needed the money in spite of having a high paying job.

What I want to say is: Mads' dad-in-law is so sweet and loves his family. And sorry, I didn't mean to do that, I was just telling my sister about a wonderful cab-ride where the part about the fortunate son-in-law was just a detail in a lovely conversation about children and grandchildren, I had no idea she would do this. And she is dry now.
posted by mumimor at 10:20 AM on April 22, 2021 [13 favorites]


Before the Hannibal series I thought it impossible for anyone to but Anthony Hopkins to inhabit that character; now There Is No Dr Lecter But Mads.

Poor Brian Cox, the first actor to play the role, now bumped down to the bronze medal slot.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 10:29 AM on April 22, 2021 [4 favorites]


Mikkelsen is one of those men who many people find attractive and I find to be squarely in the uncanny valley of repulsion. Like one reason I never bought Hannibal-the-TV-show is that I could never imagine him being accepted in society--he would make everyone's tail bushy, so to speak.
posted by praemunire at 10:43 AM on April 22, 2021


(Brian Cox's villain work is generally underrated. I rewatched X2 at some point last year and realized that his Stryker is by far the best-acted of the human villains in the entire franchise, even knocking out Peter Dinklage's unfortunately underdeveloped Trask.)
posted by praemunire at 10:44 AM on April 22, 2021


Awww, this is an adorable and mildly profound interview! I have no Mads Mikkelsen Moment(tm) to contribute, but this interview and the 3-minute video cements my opinion that while his status as an intelligent woman's sex object based on his creepiest roles says Some Bad Things about the relationship between hetero women's sexuality and fear/power dynamics, I would probably find him delightful in person, either to work with or as a partner. Also, ta for warning me off of Pusher and recommending Valhalla Rising.
posted by All hands bury the dead at 11:48 AM on April 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


Mads' weirdly Asian Tristan is one of my favorite parts of my guilty love movie, 2004's "King Arthur".
posted by hanov3r at 11:53 AM on April 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


My favourite Mads Mikkelsen moment is that his children screamed at him to take the role of the bitch in Rihanna's Bitch better Have My Money music video or they would kill him.

And that he got he got the false nails with his face on it that Rihanna wore in the video.
posted by MartinWisse at 12:22 PM on April 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


Mikkelsen is one of those men who many people find attractive and I find to be squarely in the uncanny valley of repulsion.

I find him I incredibly hot, but know exactly what you mean. I spent the 1st few episodes of Hannibal convinced there was some CGI going on with his face. It's so stark and beautiful but uncanny and off-putting.
posted by Mavri at 1:30 PM on April 22, 2021


Also, ta for warning me off of Pusher and recommending Valhalla Rising.

Uhh, just as an FYI, if you're looking for something not dark, bloody and violent, Valhalla Rising ain't it. It's basically a 70s metaphysical science fiction film but with vikings instead of spaceships. And like most Refn films, it's pretty visceral and bleak.
posted by slimepuppy at 2:01 PM on April 22, 2021 [5 favorites]


I went to university in Aarhus at the same as Mads went to theater school there. Being a broke student who liked to go to the theater, I went to see the graduation shows of many of the classes that passed through the theater school (chearer tickets than the shows with professional actors), and also happened to see Mads' graduation show. It's not a particularly memorable event these many years later, but I do remember several members of the friends I went with swooning very heavily over him, which made me remember him when I started seeing him show up on the big and small screens later on.
posted by AwkwardPause at 3:42 PM on April 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


if you're looking for something not dark, bloody and violent, Valhalla Rising ain't it

So very true. If you want to give his Danish work a look, then A Royal Affair or After the Wedding might be better places to start.
posted by biffa at 4:32 PM on April 22, 2021 [1 favorite]


He's great in Adams Æbler (Adam's Apples) as well, which is still kinda dark I guess, but I put very much more in a category with Blinkende Lygter (Flickering Lights) mentioned upthread.
posted by Dysk at 10:44 PM on April 22, 2021 [2 favorites]


One of my favourite things about him is that while he tends to play ruthless stony-faced villains in Hollywood movies, in Danish one he generally plays some sort of hapless (usually well-meaning) and rather dim-witted lads who get beaten up a lot.

If you don't want too much gore and violence I can recommend the comedy The Green Butchers (his first foray into cannibalism), Adam's Apples and After The Wedding which is just all-round good - don't bother with the American remake, which was weirdly gender-swapped (you'll see how weird if you watch the film.

There's also Bleeder, Nicholas Winding Refn's first film (I think), which has a lot of violence and gore in the foreground, while in what seems to be another story altogether Mads plays the very shy, very sweet Lenny, who spends the whole film trying to muster up the nerve to ask a girl out.

Oh, and he does a voiceover in The Moomins and the Comet Chase, which features a load of actors who normally play stone-cold killers (Mads, Peter Stormare, Max von Sydow, two Skarsgards) doing the voices for a series of little fluffy woodland creatures. It's possibly the most Scandi thing I've ever seen (theme song by Bjork).
posted by Fuchsoid at 12:20 AM on April 23, 2021 [6 favorites]


Pusher was Refn's first film, then Bleeder. There was quite a big gap from Pusher to Pusher II then Pusher III was pretty soon after, so it may be misleading.
posted by biffa at 1:53 AM on April 23, 2021


Skarsgård, or the standard transliteration if you can't type å would be Skarsgaard?
posted by Dysk at 4:15 AM on April 23, 2021


(Sorry, that's a bugbear of mine because of having two vowels in my surname that don't exist in English, and people do weird reduction transliterations like å to a all the time, and it causes no end of problems with UK bureaucracy that can't handle names on forms/in systems not matching what's in my passport, which contains renderings with both the correct characters, and the standard two-letter transliterations.)
posted by Dysk at 4:23 AM on April 23, 2021 [1 favorite]


MetaFilter: Sorry, that's a bugbear of mine because of having two vowels in my surname that don't exist in English, and people do weird reduction transliterations like å to a all the time, and it causes no end of problems with UK bureaucracy…
posted by mazola at 7:10 AM on April 23, 2021


I know it is problematic to invoke a property involving the Potter Person, but I am really looking forward to Mads sinking his teeth into Gellert Grindelwald
posted by Ber at 10:59 AM on April 25, 2021 [2 favorites]


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