In the channel of the Naviglio Grande, the Milanese canal emptied to undertake winter maintenance works, the puddles of water are covered with ice. Above, the sky is a purest blue. Even though the sun shines helplessly, it is one of the coldest days of the year. But Mads Mikkelsen (Østerbro, Denmark, 58 years old) seems to move in his own bubble, inside which the spring for which the ethereal suits that he wears in this photo shoot are destined has already arrived.
Between changes of look, He smokes a cigarette as only movie stars know how to do, before posing again in the former studio of the sculptor Andrea Cascella (1919-1990), sliding between the marble sculptures. Mikkelsen appears comfortable in front of the lens and is cruel, sweet, melancholic or smiling as appropriate. He doesn’t seem to feel the cold. However, “how cold!” is the first thing he says when, three hours later, we sit down to talk. “And to think that Viking blood should run through my veins!” So the indifference to temperature that we just saw has been a work of interpretation? “It is part of my job, which consists of creating a situation with which to blend in and remain in it. “The more I risk, the easier everything else is.”
In other words, this photo session has been another interpretative display, the umpteenth of a star who is equally comfortable in European arthouse cinema as in the most bombastic ones. blockbusters Americans. “In Hollywood I have learned that small budgets speed up production and make it more efficient: the more money there is, the more people involved and the slower everything slows down,” he says. That video comes to mind in which Marcello Mastroianni, waiting in his dressing room for the filming of a scene to begin, revealed that the actor’s job consists above all of… “Waiting, waiting and waiting,” Mikkelsen interrupts. “Yes, I have also seen that video. And it is exactly like that,” he laughs. “Each actor waits in a different way. Some stay in the role, but I prefer to distance myself and return when it’s time to shoot. I don’t like taking the character home: he would be crazy, and my children would have to call me a different name every time.
In fact, living with a Nazi, for example, must not be very pleasant… “Exactly!” he laughs, thinking of the perfidious phil-Hitler professor he played in the last chapter of the Indiana Jones saga, alongside his idol. Harrison Ford. In some scenes of the film, both, due to the demands of the script, were rejuvenated by 30 years by the grace of Artificial Intelligence, the use of which raises concern among actors and scriptwriters. “In cases like this it is a fantastic creative resource, because it allowed us to show the same actors at two different ages, but if they start making films without the physical presence of the actors, then it will be another story. We don’t want it to happen. Nobody wants. But it will happen. I’m not worried though. It’s like when film festivals opposed streaming platforms. streaming: It is a reality that is already here, we must accept it and learn from each other. Cinemas will never disappear, people want to see movies in the theater, and on the screen they want to see real people.”
“Going to the movies is a pleasure,” he says, but Mikkelsen can only afford it “from time to time,” he says. “Now for me it’s something different: I look at the screen and people look at me looking at the screen.” In Denmark she is a superstar and, looking back at her extraordinary career, it is curious to think that, until she was 30, the idea of being an actor had never even crossed her mind. “I started almost by chance: we were a group of people, many of whom came from film and acting school, who dreamed of changing Danish cinema. we liked Taxi Driver but nobody made films like those in Denmark. When I started, a lot of things were happening.”
It refers to the Danish new wave of the nineties, to the Dogme 95 manifesto, to directors such as Lars Von Trier or Thomas Vinterberg (with whom Mikkelsen filmed The huntwhich earned him the award for best leading actor at Cannes in 2012, and Another roundOscar for best foreign film of 2021) and, of course, Nicolas Winding Refn, with whom he debuted in Pusher (nineteen ninety six). It is normal for him to answer “Martin Scorsese” when we ask him about the director to whom he would say yes with his eyes closed, without having to read the script first. “I would be happy to appear even if it were in the background of a frame of one of your films. I grew up with his movies. I have met him a few times, he is very kind. I’m almost sure I told him that I dream of working for him… Yes, I think something has gotten to him,” he laughs.
The reason Mikkelsen started acting so late was that, as a child, he wanted to do something very different. “I always dreamed of dedicating myself to sports at a professional level. But I didn’t get it.” He first tried out as a gymnast. Later, for ten years, he was a professional dancer (just remember the extraordinary final scene of Another round in which he dances drunk). In her professional history, dance and acting are intertwined. “Some of my movie idols, like Bruce Lee, are almost dancers. Above all, Buster Keaton: in each of his gestures there is something of elegance and music. And, furthermore, he does not speak.”
Mikkelsen himself faced something akin to a silent film when he played a one-eyed Viking warrior in that visionary masterpiece that was the Valhalla Rising from Refn: “It’s true: One-Eye, my character, is mute because his tongue has been cut out. Refn and I did an interesting job, we transformed it into a musical work, a painting, a landscape. It was difficult, but when we did it it was a lot of fun.”
Whether as a terrifying Viking warrior or as an innocent primary school teacher wrongly accused of abusing a child (The hunt), Mikkelsen is always credible. And, at the same time, every time they call him from Hollywood it is to offer him the same role, that of super bad guy. It never fails. “As long as I make a living from it, I like it,” he laughs. “I grew up with American movies, I love watching them and it makes me happy to be a part of them. Plus, I have fun playing the bad guy.”
The question of good and evil, he explains, does not influence him when choosing a role. “As an actor, I think the only thing I would perhaps refuse would be to shoot scenes that are too intimate, in which you almost have to have real sex; they bore me. From the point of view of the stories, however, I have no limits: if the film is interesting, I would play any character, even the most terrible one.” It wouldn’t be far-fetched if he managed to fulfill his second cinematographic dream, after filming with Scorsese: “I would like to make a real horror film, it’s a genre that I like, but I’ve never tried.” With what director? “Without a doubt, with John Carpenter. He is my type.”
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