Mads Mikkelsen: ‘It’s always great fun to play the villain’

Here's something you should know about Mads Mikkelsen. He's a great deal of fun. I suppose there is a playfulness to many of his performances. The Mikkelsen version of Hannibal Lecter in the much-missed TV series Hannibal deals in the blackest class of comedy. He's loving his turn as Kaecilius – a sinister mystical master – in this week's Doctor Strange. But his impishness still comes as something of a surprise.

“We haven’t much time,” he says. “I’ll keep my answers quick. Let’s do this.”

Okay. There are a lot of fisticuffs in Doctor Strange. Did he end up covered in bruises? Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the titular conjurer, could have had his eye out on several occasions.

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“Ha! We call it flying Kung Fu,” he says. “We did it for 10 hours a day. If you’re not getting bruises, you’re not doing it right.”

Of course, he spent nearly a decade as a dancer before moving into film. That must help.

“I was a gymnast as well. The gymnastic part is even more helpful. You can do some splits and spin around do side kicks without killing yourself totally. That’s handy.”

The training seems to have kept him in shape. Now 50, dressed today in artfully distressed jeans, he could easily pass for a decade younger. With those thin eyes and sharp features, he would, in an ideal world, be playing romantic leads into his sixties. Hollywood will, however, insist on casting him as villains. His big English-language break was as arch-cad Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. They still don't trust us Europeans.

“Yeah, the Brits had those roles for a long time. Now it’s us,” he says. “But it’s always great fun to play the villain. They become a mirror reflection of the hero if they are well written. Something the hero recognises and loathes at the same time.”

Bit of a sportsman So how did Mads get here? Raised in Copenhagen to an ordinary family -- dad was a bank teller, mum a nurse – the young Mikkelsen fancied himself as a bit of a sportsman. Apparently, he was top-notch at that weird version of handball they play in the Olympics. Gymnastics eventually led him to world of dance.

“Dancing was my job,” he shrugs. “I hadn’t intended that either. I was in a show and learning my craft. I’d nothing else to do and that became my job. It beats working. Ha ha! I got more and more aware that I was in love with the dramatic side of it and not the aesthetic part. I watched the actors and thought: maybe I could do that. I became inquisitive and ended up at drama school.”

Mads's career moved quickly. In 1996, more or less straight out of college, he was cast as a drug dealer in Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher. He went on to work with the royalty of contemporary Danish cinema: Anders Thomas Jensen, Susanne Bier, Lone Sherfig. He spent time in Ireland filming Antione Fuqua's King Arthur. He dubbed Pixar films. Then, in 2006, he was nabbed by the mainstream for Casino Royale. It shouldn't need to be said that, like virtually all Scandinavians, he speaks better English than I do.

“The language itself isn’t the issue,” he says. “The issue is the accent. The accent is very difficult to get rid of. You’re Irish. I am sure for fun you could imitate a British accent, but you wouldn’t feel that was part of you. It would be an imitation. For actors, imitation is a very different thing to acting.”

High-profile projects Mikkelsen has not done an enormous number of English- language projects, but, among the modest clutter, there are some very high-profile projects. Doctor Strange is already among the best-reviewed films in Disney's Marvel sequence. Bond is Bond. The hungry Hannibal Lecter is who he is. In December, he will be seen in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. What can he tell us about that?

“Nothing” he says with a resigned shrug.

Okay then. Tell us what it feels like to be swept along by the Star Wars typhoon.

“I wasn’t running around before I got the job saying it would be so important to me that I am in a Star Wars film. But then I probably didn’t think that with Marvel or the Bond film either. Once it happened I was very proud. Two big franchises. I was very proud.”

Hannibal is a different matter. Bryan Fuller beautifully revolting series – though cast in depth – belonged to Mikkelsen’s insidious Lecter. But it proved a little too odd for network TV and died after three seasons. We miss it.

“I don’t know the technicalities of what happened,” he says. “If we wanted to seek and find a different network, that option was there. But Bryan had left it and was dedicating himself to something else. For good reason. He was still hoping NBC would keep it. I don’t know what will happen. But it’s not the end of the world. It’s the sort of story that you could pick up after four years or whatever.”

Ears are pricking up across the world. He’s saying a revival is possible?

“It could come back to after four years. It is a possibility.”

Meanwhile the Mikkelsen juggernaut rumbles on. I wonder what they make of his success in Denmark. It’s a small country. We know how those work.

“They can react either way,” he laughs. “That’s how Denmark is sometimes. Some are proud. Some say ‘fuck it!’”

He’s getting above himself?

“Exactly. ‘Who does he think he is?’ It’s like Ireland that way, I guess.”

You’re not wrong, pal.

Dr Strange is out now. Read our review here