Mads Mikkelsen

Mr. Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen,[1] R (Danish:  The sound is [ms ml sn] ( listen ) (born in Denmark on November 22, 1965) Originally a gymnast and dancer, he rose to fame in Denmark as an actor for his roles such as Tonny in the first two films of the Pusher film trilogy (1996, 2004), Detective Sergeant Allan Fischer in the television series Rejseholdet (2000–2004), Niels in Open Hearts (2002), Svend in The Green Butchers (2003) The characters of Ivan from Adam's Apples (2005) and Jacob Petersen from After the Wedding (2006)

After playing the villainous Le Chiffre in the twenty-first James Bond film, Casino Royale (2006), Mikkelsen gained widespread acclaim. [2] His other roles include Igor Stravinsky in Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2008), Johann Friedrich Struensee in A Royal Affair (2012), his Cannes Film Festival Best Actor Award-winning performance as Lucas in the Danish film The Hunt (2012), Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the television series Hannibal (2013–2015), Kaecilius in Marvel's Doctor Strange (2016), Galen Erso in Lucasfilm's Rogue One (2016) His roles as Cliff Unger in Hideo Kojima's video game Death Stranding (2019), Martin in Another Round (2020), and Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (2022) have all garnered him acclaim. [3]

In Hollywood, Mikkelsen has "become a reliable character actor with an intriguing mug," according to A. O. Scott of The New York Times, but at home, "he is something else: a star, an axiom, a face of the resurgent Danish cinema," Scott wrote. [4]

Early life [ edit ]

On 22 November 1965, in the sterbro neighborhood of Copenhagen, Denmark,[1] Mikkelsen was born to taxi driver parents Bente Christiansen and Henning Mikkelsen. They both grew up in the Nrrebro neighborhood of Copenhagen, where he was a child prodigy and his older brother, actor Lars Mikkelsen, was a star. [7]

He originally wanted to be an athlete, but changed his focus to dance after attending the Balettakademien (ballet academy) in Gothenburg, where he also learned to speak fluent Swedish. [8] Mikkelsen met his future wife, the choreographer Hanne Jacobsen, during his time as a dancer; they wed in the year 2000. After nearly a decade as a professional dancer, he decided to switch careers and enroll in drama classes at the rhus Theatre School in 1996. [9][10]

Career [ edit ]

1996–2005 [ edit ]

In 1996, Mikkelsen made his acting debut in the critically acclaimed and commercially successful film Pusher, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, which went on to spawn two sequels. Popular Danish films featured him in supporting, often comedic, roles. Bleeder (1999) was directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and starred Mads Mikkelsen and Kim Bodnia as a film expert and a woman with avoidant personality disorder, Lenny. Flickering Lights, Anders Thomas Jensen's 2000 Copenhagen gangster film, starred Mikkelsen as a gangster opposite Sren Pilmark, Ulrich Thomsen, and Nikolaj Lie Kaas. Starring in the gay comedy Shake It All About (2001) the following year brought him wider fame. [11][12]

In 2002's Open Hearts, Mikkelsen played the lead role of a young doctor who falls in love with the girlfriend of one of his patients, a performance that earned him best actor nominations from both the Robert and Bodil awards in 2003. At the 2003 Rouen Nordic Film Festival, he also won the award for best actor for this role. The short film Nu, in which Mikkelsen starred in the lead role as a man who abandons his wife and child, was released in 2003. He co-starred with Kaas in the film The Green Butchers as an orphaned butcher's assistant in a provincial Danish town where human meat is a specialty. [15] His performance as the butcher earned him the Fantasporto Award for Best Actor. A few months later in 2003, he starred as the frustrated encyclopedia salesman in Torremolinos 73, Pablo Berger's Spanish film about a man who exports pornographic films to Scandinavia under the guise of an audiovisual encyclopedia of human reproduction. The film was well-received in Spain, but it bombed in the Nordic countries. [16]

Mikkelsen returned to the role of Tonny, the drug dealer, in the 2004 sequel Pusher II. He won three acting awards for his performance: the Bodil Award, the Zulu Award, and the Robert Festival Award. Comparing his pose in the mirror to Robert De Niro's in Taxi Driver, directed by Martin Scorsese, is what one critic said about him. [17] In the 2005 film Adam's Apples, Mikkelsen played Ivan, an "unorthodox country vicar" who challenges a neo-Nazi (Ulrich Thomsen) serving community service to bake an apple pie. [18]

In Niels Arden Oplev's Danish television series Rejseholdet (Unit One) (2000-03), Mikkelsen played a sensitive policeman and won the 2002 Best Actor Award from TvFestival Denmark for his performance. dk The four-year run of the series' 32 episodes was grueling. King Arthur (2004), directed by Jerry Bruckheimer and starring him as Tristan, was a commercial success despite critical acclaim, and thus catapulted him to international stardom. [19]

2006–2010 [ edit ]

For the 2006 Oscar-winning film Prag (Prague) directed by Ole Christian Madsen, Mikkelsen co-starred with Stine Stengade and Jana Plodková. Award nominations for Best Actor at the Bodil and Robert Festivals came his way thanks to his performance as Christoffer, for which he received the Zulu. His "rigid countenance" in an "outstanding" performance was praised by Variety's Eddie Cockrell. Casino Royale, the twenty-first James Bond film, gave Mikkelsen his first taste of international acclaim. [20] In the same year, he played Le Chiffre. According to Mikkelsen, he was cast so effortlessly that even Daniel Craig asked him if he had slept with someone for the role. Regarding the casting process, he said, "They'd done their homework, seen my stuff, so it was fine, just a bit of anti-climax because I was so ready to do more for them, but it was... shrugs." you're in He was already a major movie star in Denmark, so he claimed that his international status didn't alter much for him. In the middle of Bond and Mikkelsen's extended poker game, Le Chiffre's left eye begins to bleed, creating a tense moment that was highlighted by Roger Ebert. According to David Edelstein of New York Magazine: "Mikkelsen clicks his rectangular plaques like he's a new breed of praying mantis." This guy gives me the creeps. After the Wedding, a Danish drama starring Mikkelsen that premiered in 2006 and received an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film, was another of Mikkelsen's leading roles. His performance earned him the Palm Springs International Film Festival's Best Actor Award and a nomination for Best Actor at the European Film Awards [12]. In Hollywood, Mikkelsen has "become a reliable character actor with an intriguing mug," according to The New York Times, but at home, "he is something else: a star, an axiom, a face of the resurgent Danish cinema." "[24]

In 2008, Mikkelsen portrayed Danish resistance fighter Jørgen Haagen Schmith opposite Thure Lindhardt and Stine Stengade in Ole Christian Madsen's Flame & Citron (Flammen & Citronen), a film which is loosely based on actual events involving two of the most active fighters in the Holger Danske resistance group during World War II The Citron factory where Mikkelsen works inspired the character's nick name, "Citronen." "The story of handsome rogues with guns," as Michael O' Sullivan of The Washington Post put it, comparing Mikkelsen and Lindhardt's protagonists to "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." It moves quickly, looks good, and provides a thrilling experience. After voicing Le Chiffre in the Quantum of Solace video game in 2008, Mikkelsen was invited to represent the character at the launch of Swiss watchmaker Swatch's "007 Villain Collection" in Bregenz, Austria. The following year, Mikkelsen played a fiery Stravinsky opposite Anna Mouglalis in Jan Kounen's critically acclaimed Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky based on the romance between the composer and the fashion designer, and he became known as one of Europe's most sensual male actors. This "visually stunning film" is about Chanel and Stravinsky's "illicit relationship in 1920s France," according to Empire magazine. Observer critic Philip French called it a "beautiful, intelligent, shallow film, like a pane of plate glass that at first glance looks like a deep lake," and he compared Mikkelsen's Stravinsky to Mouglalis's Coco Chanel, saying that the two characters were "fellow modernists and equally cool egotists." "[29] Mikkelsen then went back to killing things, working with Refn again (as a Norse warrior in the Crusades in Valhalla Rising (2009) and as Draco, the self-sacrificing leader of the king's guard in Clash of the Titans (2010)). All of the footage for [12]Valhalla Rising was filmed in Scotland. [30]

Since 2011 [ edit ]

Comte de Rochefort in The Three Musketeers, another critical and commercial failure from 2011, in which he starred. During the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, he won the Best Actor Award for his performance in The Hunt. [2] He was nominated for the European Film Award for Best Actor and the London Film Critics Circle Award for Actor of the Year for his performance as a schoolteacher falsely accused of child molestation. He played the role of Johann Friedrich Struensee, a doctor in the 18th century who had an affair with Queen Caroline Mathilda while treating the mentally ill Danish monarch Christian VII in the Oscar-nominated historical drama A Royal Affair. The film's lavish costumes were a major reason for its high production cost, but the payoff was positive reviews and a place in Danish cinema history. "I was surprised how emotional I got reading this, especially for a period drama," Mikkelsen said of his role. And it was rife with difficulty: he loves the king and queen deeply, but he also can't help but play politics, and before long he's doing the very things he condemned his fellow courtiers for. also, I found that to be fascinating and surprisingly human [21] In 2012, he also received the Person of the Year award from the Danish American Society. [33]

Hannibal (2013–2015) on NBC starred Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter opposite Hugh Dancy's Special Agent Will Graham. The series has received positive reviews, and Mikkelsen's portrayal of Lecter has been singled out for particular acclaim. At first, Mikkelsen was hesitant to take on the role because he felt that Anthony Hopkins had already "done to perfection" the role of Lecter. "He's not a classic psychopath or a classic serial killer," he said of his protagonist. I think he's about as close to Satan, the fallen angel, as anyone can get. The finality of death has a certain grace in his eyes. In addition, each day brings fresh chances. "[36]

Alongside Shia LaBeouf and Evan Rachel Wood, he made his Sundance Film Festival debut in 2013's Charlie Countryman, which also premiered at the Cannes Film Festival that same year. He made his acting debut in the Danish western The Salvation in 2014. The song "Bitch Better Have My Money" features Mikkelsen as Rihanna's accountant, the "bitch" who steals from her. [37]

Mikkelsen served on the 2016 Cannes Film Festival's main competition jury. [38] He co-starred with Benedict Cumberbatch and Tilda Swinton as Kaecilius in the 2016 Marvel film Doctor Strange, releasing in October. Despite the fact that his character was called Marvel's "generic baddie" and underutilized,[39][40][41] Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com praised Mikkelsen's performance, saying, "Mikkelsen is a master at being in on the joke while still delivering every line with imagination and feeling." He has a unique blend of performance traits—he's smart and witty, sometimes to the point of being arch. [42] In Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which was released in December 2016, Mikkelsen played the role of Galen Erso. In 2018, he starred in the Brazilian director Joe Penna's survival thriller Arctic. [44] In Doug Liman's film adaptation of Patrick Ness's science fiction trilogy Chaos Walking, he played the nefarious mayor. [45]

Death Stranding, developed by Hideo Kojima, featured Mikkelsen in a starring role. (2018)'s At Eternity's Gate, directed by Julian Schnabel and starring Willem Dafoe, featured him in a supporting role. Earlier this year (2019), he starred in Jonas kerlund's action film Polar, which was adapted from Vctor Santos' graphic novel Polar: Came With the Cold. It has a 19% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 47 critic reviews. Carlsberg's flagship beer, Mikkelsen, has been rebrewed as a Danish pilsner, and Mikkelsen appears in the brand's new 2019 UK commercial. [50]

In the Danish comedy-drama "Another Round (film)," Mikkelsen teamed up with Thomas Vinterberg again. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, and Mikkelsen received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor in a Leading Role.

When Johnny Depp lost his defamation suit against News Group Newspapers in 2020, it was revealed in November that Mads Mikkelsen was in early talks with Warner Bros. to take over the role of Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts series, starting with Fantastic Beasts and the Secrets of Dumbledore. Warner Bros. announced Mikkelsen's casting as Grindelwald on November 25. [54]

Mikkelsen joined the cast of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in April 2021. [55]

A Cold War thriller directed by Amma Asante, Billion Dollar Spy, will feature him as a lead actor. [56]

In May of 2022, it was announced that Mikkelsen would be recasting his role as Duncan Vizla in a new film titled The Black Kaiser, which would be directed by Jonas Akerlund and feature a screenplay that Mikkelsen co-wrote. In the same year, it was revealed that he would play the lead role in The Bastard, a film directed by Nikolaj Arcel and set to begin production in September 2022. [58][59]

On his first directorial effort, Dust Bunny, set to begin filming in January 2023, he will reunite with Hannibal creator Bryan Fuller. [60][61]

Daily life [ edit ]

Mikkelsen married choreographer Hanne Jacobsen in 2000; the couple had been together since 1987. There are two kids in the family. [62][63]

Except for when he was in Toronto filming Hannibal, Mikkelsen has spent his entire life in Copenhagen. He first visited the Spanish island of Mallorca in the late 1990s and now splits his time between there and his home in Denmark (which he bought in the early 2000s). [65]

He is consistently named Denmark's "sexiest man." Mikkelsen does not believe in God [66]. [67][68]

Honours [ edit ]

Mikkelsen was made a Ridder (Knight) of the Dannebrog on April 15, 2010. The French government bestowed upon Mikkelsen the title of Chevalier (Knight) of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in April of 2016. [70]

Filmography [ edit ]

Film [ edit ]

Key Indicates future publication dates for these works.

Television [ edit ]

Online Games [ edit ]

Video clips of music [ edit ]

Awarded and Nominated [ edit ]

References [ edit ]

Additional Reading [ edit ]

• Ove Holger Krak (Danish) Volume 29 of the Kraks Blue Book (Kraks Bl Bog). Krak p  775 ISBN 8772258446

References outside the text [ edit ]