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Overview (3) |
Mini Bio (2) |
Family (4) |
Trade Mark (4) |
Trivia (28) |
Personal Quotes (27)
Overview (3)
| Born | in Østerbro, Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Birth Name | Mads Dittman Mikkelsen |
| Height | 6' (1.83 m) |
Mini Bio (2)
Mads Mikkelsen's great successes parallel those achieved by the Danish film industry since the mid-1990s. He was born in Østerbro, Copenhagen, to Bente Christiansen, a nurse, and Henning Mikkelsen, a banker.
Starting out as a low-life pusher/junkie in the 1996 success Pusher (1996), he slowly grew to become one of Denmark's biggest movie actors. The success in his home country includes Flickering Lights (2000), Shake It (2001) and the Emmy-winning police series Rejseholdet (2000).
His success has taken him abroad where he has played alongside Gérard Depardieu in I Am Dina (2002) as well as in the Spanish comedy Torremolinos 73 (2003) and the American blockbuster King Arthur (2004).
He played the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the critically acclaimed NBC series Hannibal (2013), from 2013 to 2015, with great success.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: churros98@yahoo.com, stella allets
As a child he trained as a gymnast and then became a professional dancer before studying drama at the Aarhus Theatre School in Denmark and became famous overnight as star of the police series 'Unit 1' which won an International Emmy as Best Drama Series. A starring film role in 'Open Arms' won him a Zulu Award and a nomination for the Danish Academy's Robert Award and Danish Film Critic's Award in 2003. 'The Green Butchers' earned him nominations for Robert and Fodil Awards as Best Actor in 2005.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Tonyman 5
Family (4)
| Spouse | Hanne Jacobsen (2 December 2000 - present) (2 children) |
| Children |
Mikkelsen, Carl
Mikkelsen, Viola |
| Parents |
Christiansen, Bente
Henning Mikkelsen |
| Relatives | Lars Mikkelsen (sibling) |
Trade Mark (4)
Often plays a character with a defective left eye: Ivan in Adam's Apples (2005), Le Chiffre in Casino Royale (2006), One Eye in Valhalla Rising (2009), Rochefort in The Three Musketeers (2011) and Duncan Vizla in Polar (2019)
Deep raspy voice
Striking chiseled features
Almond-shaped hazel eyes
Trivia (28)
Younger brother of actor Lars Mikkelsen.
Two children, Viola and Carl.
Several polls in girl magazines and newspapers have voted him "sexiest man in Denmark".
His favourite movie is Taxi Driver (1976).
The Danish magazine Woman voted him "the sexiest man in the world".
He was a professional dancer for 8 years.
Son of Henning Mikkelsen.
Brother-in-law of actress Anette Støvelbæk.
Mads is pronounced like 'mas' in Christmas. Mikkelsen is 'mikkel' as you would pronounce the metal 'nickel' and 'sen' is pronounced 'zen' - Mickelzen.
Speaks Swedish fluently and has lived in Gothenburg for many years.
Learned Swedish during his 1-year-long dance training in Göteborg because he grew tired of Swedes only smiling and nodding at him when he spoke to them in Danish.
A keen motorcyclist owning a rare 1937 Danish Nimbus.
Mads is a form of Matthew; meaning "Gift of God".
Wasn't a James Bond fan before starring in Casino Royale (2006).
Knighted on April 16th 2010 by Her Majesty Margrethe 2nd, Queen of Denmark.
Plays Le Chiffre, the villain of Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel, Casino Royale (2006). Fleming's final Bond novel was The Man with the Golden Gun (1974), the villain and title character of which was played by Fleming's cousin, Christopher Lee. Mikkelsen and Lee have also both played Count Rochefort in The Three Musketeers (1973)/The Three Musketeers (2011).
Received an award at the Cannes Film Festival from Gong Li. Mikkelsen plays Hannibal Lecter in the NBC series Hannibal (2013), Li played Lady Murasaki (Lecter's aunt and lover) in Hannibal Rising (2007).
The first Danish actor to play Hannibal Lecter. He is also the tallest of the four actors to play Lecter to date.
USA: Playing lead role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter in NBC thriller Hannibal (2013), based on the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. [April 2013]
Shooting the Danish movie Adam's Apples (2005). [August 2004]
Has appeared in four Danish films that were submitted for the Oscar in the Best Foreign Language Film category: After the Wedding (2006), A Royal Affair (2012), The Hunt (2012) and Another Round (2020), with the latter winning in the category.
He has played the accountant in the music video "Bitch Better Have My Money" from the singer Rihanna.
Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 69th Cannes International Film Festival in 2016.
One of very few actors to have appeared in a Star Wars film (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)), a James Bond film (Casino Royale (2006)) and a Marvel Cinematic Universe film (Doctor Strange (2016)). Coincidentally, his character dies in all three films.
Is very good friends with his Hannibal (2013) co-star Hugh Dancy since the pair starred together in the film King Arthur (2004).
He was originally a gymnast and dancer on Danish television.
Son of Henning Mikkelsen, bank teller and trade union official, and wife Bente Christiansen, nurse.
Personal Quotes (27)
[on the fact that he is voted "the sexiest man in Denmark" over and over] I'd rather be voted "the sexiest man in Denmark" than "the ugliest man in Denmark".
I'm a beer man. I tried to drink whiskey and Scotch but I don't get it. It smells like a girl who didn't shower and just splashed a lot of perfume on.
[on his 1937 Danish Nimbus motorcycle] It is like something Steve McQueen would ride. I love the freedom and it doesn't go quite as fast as a modern bike, which pleases my wife.
I take my work enormously seriously. When I do something it has to feel right. Everything has to be right. I'm not ambitious about my career, but I am ambitious with each job. I can be fairly annoying to work with. No compromises. Let's put it this way: compromises are from hell.
I ask a million questions, and I insist on having answers. I think that is what we have to do. I have to know what the director wants. Some are very much in their head, and I need to force it out of them. I just can't play around for eight hours and see if something happens.
[on his version of Hannibal Lecter] He loves fine art. He is a three-piece suit man. He loves classical music. He hates everything that is banal. And he loves the beauty of everything that's refined. He's trying to make friends with people, so I can't play that one card of being evil. It has to be hidden.
I try not to carry any character back home because that would be extremely frustrating for my family. It stays with you, of course, if for 14 hours a day you're being accused of something you haven't done and you can't get your frustration out anywhere. Whereas with a character like Hannibal, he's probably the happiest man I've ever played, even though he's doing horrendous things. He's a happy duckling and life is beautiful.
[on his Hannibal (2013) co-star Hugh Dancy] Hugh has become one of my very, very, very good friends. We knew each other from before, but it's been so intense to spend three seasons together. I was there when he had his first little baby. It's been a fantastic journey. We were just very, very lucky that we ended up with each other. Imagine if we had ended up with someone we didn't like.
I always try to find something I like about the bad guys and then try to find the mistakes and the flaws in the good guys.
[on how he would like to be remembered] Depending on who's going to remember me. Hopefully my family is going to remember me as somebody who loved them tremendously. If we're talking about audiences, I would love to be remembered as the person who had a certain variety of work behind them and did his best. But I can't control it.
[on working with Nicolas Winding Refn] When Nicolas and I started out together, it was his first film and now we've been working ever since so that is special. I think he's just a brilliant moviemaker; he's extremely emotionally and visually clever but not super precise in what he wants. He gives a lot of liberties to the actors for us to translate what he wants and I just enjoy working in that manner.
[on working with Daniel Craig in Casino Royale (2006)] I tremendously enjoyed working with Daniel. Obviously that was his first Bond film and it was a new take on the whole franchise so everybody was nervous because there was already so much criticism. I was amazed with the way Daniel handled the pressure; he was so focused on the work and came in doing the best everyday.
Right now it seems as if television has some balls it didn't have 10 years ago; they get away with stuff that some films cannot get away. It might change again in some years and I don't know the mystery of why it's happening right now, but I think it's a nice development.
I do a lot of racing bikes, a lot of tennis; I play handball, some boxing, whatever pops up.
It is very hard to shock a person who works in the business so in order for me to find [a scene] shocking, it has to be something very realistic, very graphic or emotionally heavy. I've been watching The Walking Dead (2010) with my son and there is absolutely nothing in there I find shocking but it's cool and I like it. We finished the whole [series] in four or five days. Now the world seems empty.
Predominantly I'm an Adidas guy who walks around in sports gear all the time because there's always a ball right next to me somewhere. I do a lot of sports but I do enjoy wearing a lot of suits. I have quite a few suits that I really enjoy wearing but, unlike Hannibal, I like wearing them [only] at special occasions.
You can only be famous to a certain degree in Denmark. And if you've been in a popular TV show, you're already famous for life. We say our ceiling is very low, meaning that you're not supposed to stick out in any way. Anyone who tries to "make it", we take them right down. There are people who say, 'Way to go, that's cool', but the next day in the paper, the paparazzi will take my picture on the way to play tennis wearing something casual, or maybe when I have the flu, and they'll put up the story, 'He's done! He's finished!'
The big blockbusters, you wake up and say hello to 500 people whereas [with small productions] you're talking to 20 or so. The magnitude of the whole thing is very different, but - having said that - you sit down, discuss the scenes, what we're about to make, and you try to make them intimate, no matter how big this whole thing is. We work as hard as we can within the frames that we're given and I think that's what everyone does, even though we're dealing with something extremely big. That's the only way you can approach it.
I'm not super conscious about [applying my experience as a former dancer to acting] but obviously I have an awareness of myself physically. Any character has a kind of energy - he's either fast or slow, or he's light - and I think, subconsciously, I'm using some of that stuff without really putting a finger on it. One thing I have learned that is a virtue among dancers is discipline.
[on being asked about his thoughts on being typecast as a villain in Hollywood blockbusters] It's hard to say. It's been very popular to use British actors to play the villains, but - for some reason - they need an even funnier accent to play the villain which is the Scandinavian one. We're the villains right now. Why they're doing it, it's hard to say, but I'm glad as, if the alternative was not to work in the States, I would do villains forever. I've been crazy lucky to be part of some wonderful projects, like Casino Royale (2006) and Hannibal (2013), where it's very difficult to call it a one-to-one villain. I've been very fortunate.
[on being asked if he has a preference between doing blockbusters and independent films] [I like doing] both. There's something wonderful about flying around on a wire with a sword, and doing the exact opposite. If you can go back and forth, you're a very lucky person.
Well, I was a dancer out of coincidence, a little like I became an actor out of coincidence. I was a gymnast as a kid, and there was a choreographer who went out and saw us and asked if we wanted to be part of this musical - they needed somebody in the background to do jumps and flips and shit. And then she asked me later on if I wanted to learn the craft of dancing. So, I did the math: there were a lot of really hot chicks, and not a lot of boys around. I stayed with that for a while, eight or nine years.
[on being perceived as intimidating] I never see that myself, but I hear it once in a while. Hopefully people figure out that I'm doing it all for the film. People will sometimes say, 'Oh man, in the beginning I thought you were going to kill me. But it turned out to be cool.'
[on signing on to Hannibal (2013)] I was extremely reluctant to do it. I read it, I liked it, but as you say, these are giant shoes to step into. This was done a couple of times before, once to perfection. What convinced me was Bryan [Fuller]. He was pitching the story for me. He had 10 minutes, but after 2 hours he was still rattling off ideas about season 48 [laughs]. Also, this takes place before the films, before he was captured, so we get the chance to show something else.
I always thought [Scandinavians] had a lot in common with the English. We grew up with the English sense of humor, particularly Monty Python, which has a certain amount of madness in there. We always loved it and identified with it.
[on dealing with fame] I don't need to wear funny hats or put on sunglasses or anything like that. Sometimes in Copenhagen it becomes annoying to get photographed when I'm buying toothpaste in a store. On the other hand there will be five very pretty female clerks anxious to show me the section where you can find the toothpaste! But I can generally go where I like and long ago I decided with my wife that I didn't want to disrupt our children's lives by moving to Los Angeles. But I always loved visiting Toronto and one of the reasons I was anxious to do Hannibal (2013) was not only because it was such a rich and beautifully written character but also it was a chance for me and my family to live somewhere else for a change. As long as I get to work regularly I'm a pretty happy guy.
[on Hannibal (2013) cancellation] We are all angry. We were pissed. It's madness. And season four was actually the one we thought we'd definitely get. Seasons two and three were on the verge. We didn't know whether Hannibal would be renewed. But by the time we got to season four we thought it was a definite. We were very surprised at the decision. We were happy to be able to do it for as long as we did. However, we felt there were more stories. We thought we ended the show in a great way, but we had more to tell.
