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Thomas VinterbergsAnother Round,features one of the rare moments in Mikkelsens filmography whenhe straight-up dances.
His character, Martin, has the leaden tread of a man stuck in a midlife crisis.
Im rarely starstruck, he says, chain-smoking in a green tracksuit from his home in Mallorca.
Maybe because what Im doing has never been a dream of mine.
Are you in Mallorca?Yes.
Do you see Rafael Nadal?Yeah.
Ive seen him quite a few times.
Not here, but Ive seen him play in the French Open.
Nothing beats Federer though.
Even when he loses, hes just amazing to watch.
So youre Team Fed?Yeah, but my wife is a Nadal fan.
I am a Nadal fan as well.
Were just so lucky to have both of them at the same time.
And Djokovic, of course.
It doesnt matter which side youre on as long as theyre both there.
Youre building stories around these guys.
But its the style, obviously.
If they were both playing the same way, it might be boring.
How long were you there?I was there for half a year, maybe more.
This was 87, so I was 21 years old.
It was the first place I really visited outside of Denmark, and it was the biggest place ever.
I remember going through the Lincoln Tunnel, very little cash in my pocket.
I had a place to stay, I had a scholarship.
And everything was just like the movies.
There were even kids playing from this fire hydrant that was broken.
I got myself some roller skates, and thats how I transported myself.
I was really a kid of the 80s.
But we always stuck in that working-class area.
Thats where we lived.
What were their aspirations for you?It was a different time, as we say.
The 80s were strange because it was not the hippie days, but life was open to a degree.
It wasnt like, Youve got to get yourself an education.
At least not where I came from.
I was the first in my own family to go to high school.
My brother did as well.
But nobody else in my school went to high school.
It was just not something you did.
I cant remember them being frustrated that I didnt get a real job.
Cleaning, bartending I wasnt sitting still.
Then the dancing took off.
That was a surprise to them, and they enjoyed watching the stuff I did.
Of course, it was a completely different world for them.
But I never heard them say, When are you going to get a real job?
And then, obviously,my brother also became an actor.They were just tremendously proud of us.
And so the doors started opening for me.
That was the 1996 Nicolas Winding Refn movie,Pusher,right?
We felt as if we were 15 even though we were much older.
We were naughty, we were doing something illegal, it was cool.
Where is this going?
What is my development?And I hadnt questioned that too much at that point.
This is a very big part of the way I approach things now, to understand whats going on.
I didnt ask that many questions then.
Sometimes it was not feeling right, and I couldnt put a finger on it.
And its like, And who were they?
I met some of them.
I was like, Seriously, you have an opinion about this film?
Youve never seen a drug dealer in your life.
What is your relationship with fandoms?
It didnt really travel in Denmark.
And because none of us were known at that time, everybody thought we were not actors.
We were not recognized, especially not me, because I was bald in the film.
And then I did a cop show,Unit One (Rejseholdet)in 2000.
We cant be too edgy.
I was abandoning everything I believed in.
Then it came out, and all of a sudden, the world was different.
And I was fairly old at that point: 30-something.
Since then, Ive never bought a normal Coca-Cola.
Theres no neutral Coca-Cola anymore.
They all serve me in a special way, with hate or with love.
I simply hadnt seen the fame coming.
I handled it fine.
It was not about me.
It was about the concept of me.
I was luckily not 17 years old.
You might believe everything.
You might believe you are special.
I forget it every day I go out.
I walk out the door and somebody says, Hey, can I get a photo?
Then I wake up.Oh, yeah, thats right.
It seems to go both ways.
Maybe he couldnt remember me.
It mightve gone both ways.
Even the biggest stars are just people.
Im rarely starstruck either.
Thats the way it is.
WasCasino Royaleyour worldwide moment?I guess it was.
I fell asleep on the plane, and I forgot it on the plane.
I am the reason why they put your name on the script.
This is what theyre trying to avoid.
I was out of the plane.
Id walked maybe a minute or something.
I realized,Oh, no,and I went back, and they wouldnt let me in.
I think I was just lucky.
I think somebody who cleaned up that plane had no idea what it was and threw it out.
I got ahold of those scenes somehow, and I went and did the audition.
Now things are happening.
Move over there and spend some time and do all the meetings and the chitchat and some auditions.
Grab that cup of coffee over there its like,Are you crazy?
Theres not even a scene here.It was kind of humiliating.
Thats the case everywhere, even in Denmark.
They get to play with the big toys.
Super-crane and spider cameras, choppers and things.
I think there is a certain budget limit where its not the directors film anymore.
I dont know what the number is.
I would guess its around $7 million, $8 million, $9 million.
Maybe $10 million.
Somebody else is the boss.
Have you witnessed that?Ive been very lucky.
Lets take the Bond film.
This is a Bond film.
We cant go there.
We were lost in our indie world, right?
You have to respect that.
It is a Bond film.
Thats the framework you should probably understand.
And youre told no because you have to call someone and theyre not awake yet.
That would never happen on a Danish film.
We will on the spot change it up to make it better together with the director and the writer.
So that hierarchy is quite different.
Youre trying to be creative while youre wearing handcuffs, and its difficult.
In past interviews,youve joked abouthow Hollywood lately goes to Scandinavians for villains.
I do them back home.
I do them in France.
Ive done it in Sweden.
LikeTorremolinos 73?Yeah, that was a crazy project.
I dont know what happened.
Nobody spoke English on set.
They forgot me on a beach once the entire crew.
I had no phone, no money on me, and everybody left.
I was like,Whats happening?
He was always running out of time.
I mean, I can see a lot of stuff missing but it was a good tone.
So yes, I do have that back here in Europe, especially in Denmark.
I definitely wouldnt mind if somebody would give me something else in America.
That would be great for me.
It would be great for them.
Your latest film, the Oscar-nominatedAnother Round,is one such role.
And they beef it up to .08, .1, etc.
Wed read some police reports where people start singing at a certain level.
People start not being able to put on their jackets.
We didnt feel a lot of things when we did it.
It didnt feel as if there was a big difference.
Watching the video tapes back, of course, it was completely different.
Even after two beers, your hands start having a life of their own.
Its as if they detach a little and become elaborate.
And then you might have a little lisp youve been hiding for 30 years.
Were you in character?Yeah, we were.
So kids might see that something is happening, but theyre not sure what it is.
And they dont care, because the lesson is great.
Its the best lesson they have had for a long time.
Did you learn anything about your own relationship to alcohol in that process?Not really.
The alcohol part of the film is merely a kick-starter to tell a story about people and about life.
In my characters case, its about a man whos come to a standstill.
Hes standing on the platform, and the train has left him.
And through the alcohol, he reclaims his life.
As opposed to other films about alcohol, there is a tribute in there to drinking.
We say that it can lift you and it can kill you.
We also wanted to say, Listen, its been here for 6,000 [or] 7,000 years.
The director, Thomas Vinterberg, experienced a personal tragedy when he was making the film.
She was a big part of the film.
She was playing my daughter, and it happened within five days of shooting.
It was her story.
It was her school.
Somehow he felt letting go of the movie now, everything would be even more empty.
He had to do it for her.
It sounds insane to say something like that, but thats the only thing he could see.
He had a choice lying in the fetal position 24/7 or doing it 12 hours a day.
Thats what he told me.
And we all said, Thats what well do.
It also brought a sense of vulnerability to set.
Because everything was reminding us of that.
But there was a strange sense of openness, like, Lets try this.
Lets give it a shot.
Everybody would have trashed the film to get her back.
ThroughoutAnother Round, the other characters urge your character, Martin, to dance.
We finally get to see it in the very last scene, which is a gorgeous, celebratory release.
What was that like to do a straight-up dance sequence for a movie?I was just insanely rusty.
I hadnt been dancing for 30 years.
I learned that seeing some of the replays was just not a good idea.
I was always like, Didnt I jump much higher once?
I know you were concerned with the film ending with a dance.
Why?My concern was that its a realistic film.
I kept saying, Listen, this is dangerous.
We can come across as super-pretentious.
A regular man gets up, and he starts dancing.
So in my world, it was always a drunken mans fantasy.
When we were supposed to do the scene, all the youngsters were out there.
They had not been drinking a single beer; they were just intoxicated by life.
The sunshine came out.
And the most famous ship in Denmark, by coincidence, was just sailing through the frame.
It was like, Of course, Im going to dance.
You also disagreed with Thomas on the ending for 2012sThe Hunt, the first film you made together.
In that you play a kindergarten teacher named Lucas who has been wrongfully accused of molesting a child.
The ending is an epilogue that takes place a year after the main events of the film.
Did you want Lucas to die?Yeah, Im disagreeable.
I tend to be the guy who is always more a fan of the darkest version of an ending.
I dont have a lot of allies when it comes to that.
I was wrong in both cases.
We did an ending inThe Huntwhere my character gets shot, bang, and I loved it.
I thought it was so brutal and so surprising.
Because I go down like a deer, like boom, boom, glasses in the mud, out.
And then someone said, We cant do it.
We cant leave the film there.
Its just not happening.
Nobody wants to see this.
But I think theres a certain fear in me that we take the easy path sometimes.
Which is not the case in these two films Im talking about.
But sometimes when I read a script, it can come across like that.
When Im like, Whoa, how on earth could they end on that note?
And then the film simply doesnt make sense anymore.
At first, I was like, Oh, God, Anthony Hopkins.
Thats just a no-go.
He did it to perfection.
Then I had a meeting with Bryan Fuller and he pitched the first season.
And I was just like,This is absolutely nothing like the film.
This is a different animal.I was one out of three or four [actorsthey were considering].
I was really reluctant to do that.
I dont like castings.
Come on guys, either you want me or not.
The murder of Francis Dolarhyde (played by Richard Armitage) isthe consummationin some ways.And also cannibalism, obviously.
This is the ultimate way to love someone in his world, to eat them right?
Me and Hugh were like, Why not?
We have a couple of takes.
It might be cool.
Did you kiss?No, we didnt.
Never went for the kiss.
Bryan loved it, but he was like, Too much, guys.
And he was absolutely right.
But I think we were just stuck on that.
And a lot of the Fannibals wanted it as well.
Its been a subject of homoerotic fan art.
And for good reason, because they are so united as twins in many ways.
But we never wanted it to be a physical thing.
It was something much bigger than that.
Finally, Will Graham is me.They are inseparable at that point.
We also knew that that was not the ending.
We knew that there was a fourth season.
But we got saved and got a second season.
And then in the third season we had much greater numbers.
So we thought it was a given we would continue.
And it didnt happen.
The work itself was brutal because we had long hours, with scripts coming in late.
Its TV, and what we were doing was elaborate.
The texts were high-IQ texts.
The monologues or the dialogues were always about fine art, music.
You had to learn Japanese, Hungarian, and words you had simply never heard before.
And you had to do it within two hours because everything came so late.
Having said that, I would love to go back.
Its still such an improbable show in so many ways because it was on NBC.Exactly.
Maybe it was a good thing we had to hold back.
It served the show really well that we didnt go full-blastWalking Deadon it.
I was wondering if you ever felt similarly.No, Ive not had that feeling.
As an actor, you go from one thing to the other.
You might wrap up the film, and then you go intoRomeo and Juliet.Its Shakespeare.
Youre shit at Shakespeare.
You have to learn how to do it, but you love it.
Everything is a challenge and brutal.
You succeed or you dont, but you learn something.
And then he froze.
He didnt know what to do anymore.
I think he spent too much time there, in the warm water.
He became more nervous to take the next step.
How can I ever live up to this again?
He learned his lesson, but it was brutal what we call learning money.
Actors get to be a little more promiscuous.Yeah, the permissiveness thing is true.
Well, not if you ask certain people.
If you ask fans ofHannibal,I should not do anything else.
But of course, you cant.
My character is called Svend Sweat, because he is always lying and sweating when hes lying.
And if he doesnt get his way, he will start crying and then he gets his way.
Hes the most annoying character you could ever imagine.
Unfortunately, I found a lot of things I had in common with him.
I was at that point famous for being one of these guys that did documentary-style realism.
And then we went in there and did something that was almost creative suicide.
We put a theater character into a film.
We took it super-seriously.
For me, that was an enormous milestone to dare to do that.
That was like, Hey, it doesnt have to be this.
It can also be this.
I kept going and Anders was like, No, we cant do this.
Its going to be terrible to watch.
But I wanted the character to look annoying.
And you could spot the sweat easier if he had a giant forehead.
Theres something about starting with the look.
All of a sudden you’re able to get away with other things.
Its actually only with him Ive worked like that.
Normally, its from the script out, and eventually we get a look.
I was wondering if you feel aware of your own charisma or beauty?Its an interesting thing.
When youre young, you feel you look too young.
You want to look older, more interesting or more mature.
And then when you get to my age, it would be nice to look a little younger.
Its always the wrong time.
Most actors, were duty bound to forget about the camera.
This is obviously a pretentious thing to say because we are super-aware of the camera.
When you do forget the camera and you have something, you feel active.
Many actors do have that sensation, but that has nothing to do with beauty.
Thats more to do with feeling we were present in the moment.
I kind of boast about not knowing her, but I did know about her music.
I was like, Why not?
When I mentioned it to my kids, my brownie points like … skyrocketed.
It was a very chaotic project.
I had a great time.
And nowIm the bitch, which is kind of cool.
Did you have a meeting with her?I didnt meet her.
I just showed up on set.
She was super-sweet Mads, finally, here you are.
I think she had seen something, and she wanted me in it.
But she acted as if we had known each other forever.
And the coolest part she had fake nails with my face on it for the video.
To remind her who the bitch is shes hunting.
Did you take anything from the set?Ive got some of those fake nails.
When we were done, I was like, Are you done with them?
Can I have some of them?
I have a few friends whore going to be so jealous when I show them this.
Whether its a play or the next film.
It is the most important thing.
That means I will be ambitious with my job and not with my career.
But if I make everything important, then eventually it will become a career.
Big or small, we dont know.
But at least everything was important.
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