Mads Mikkelsen quotes:

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  • II know a little about Greek mythology. It's not that far away from the Nordic mythology.

  • We can ask ourselves why we invent God, and then, ten minutes later, we invent Satan - why? Because we need him; there's something fascinating about the other side of the coin.

  • I did a TV show called 'Unit 1.' It wasn't a bad experience, but yes, the first season I didn't have a good time because I was coming from Nicolas Winding Refn films where the corners were sharp and radical, but now we had round corners.

  • England and Denmark have a sense of irony and a darker sense of humour that you don't necessarily find in Germany and Sweden.

  • I know a little about Greek mythology. It's not that far away from the Nordic mythology.

  • I fancy myself at being pretty good at understanding a script and finding the weaknesses, and then making them more radical than they are. People tend to listen to me.

  • One thing I can say about the French language is that no one in the world loves their language as much as they do. It doesn't matter if you're close - it still sounds terrible to their ears.

  • 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.

  • I don't necessarily prefer playing villains. I know a lot of people say they are more fun, but if the scriptwriter has done their work well, you can find something realistic in a villain and find the mistakes in a hero - it's all down to the writing.

  • I was a very focused kid. I always had this crazy lifestyle... billions of jobs, two hours of gymnastics every day, handball, anything with a ball, really. I must have had ADHD or something. I was very energetic, and very small. I didn't start growing until the last year of high school.

  • I was a late bloomer, but I had a career as a contemporary dancer before that, so I had some kind of connection to this world. But I was always a little more in love with the drama of dancing than the aesthetics, so I thought, 'Why don't you give it a chance if you think you can do it a little different?'

  • The physicality of any character is always split up into fast, slow, high energy, low energy, what kind of personality he has. So that's where the physicality comes in. And flying through the air is just something you have to do if they ask you.

  • If people need to be informed by lines, then there's no reason why the actor is saying the line except for information for the audience; I think there's something wrong.

  • I'm not even on Facebook. I've got enough friends I never see. You know how you have a lot of friends you never call? I don't have time for new friends, and I don't want to be friends with someone only online.

  • I tend not to have any references to anything. I just jump into the script in front of me. If you reference too much, you have no idea if the performances are right.

  • I love working back home, but it is a small country, and we do get tired of watching each other.

  • A solid family, as they say. They join me on location if they have a chance, but I can also be home three or four months doing nothing, so I probably see my kids more than people who work constantly all year long. If that changes, we'll have to have a family meeting.

  • In a way, we tried to make 'The Salvation' a contemporary film with contemporary emotions. At the same time, in the script, you get a feel that all the small talk is not a part of our universe. It's more precise talk.

  • I've been watching 'Walking Dead' with my son, and there is absolutely nothing in there I find shocking, but it's cool, and I like it.

  • There is a tendency to underestimate the power of what we can do without words. Sometimes you can make a scene even more powerful and precise without dialogue.

  • Before we made films about gangsters, everything was about the royal families. They contain so much drama.

  • I haven't watched that much TV, to be honest. To be honest, I don't watch that many films anymore - partly because I don't have time; secondly, because I watch a lot of sports, and I love watching sports.

  • I was into sports and swimming as a kid and didn't spend a whole lot of time sitting down. I was a gymnast.

  • Sometimes we misunderstand what films can do. We just throw a whole book in there, with people just talking, talking, and talking. The picture can tell, the frame can tell.

  • I never even thought about being an actor. Somebody asked me if I'd like to learn the craft, and I said, 'Okay.' I was a gymnast in a show at that time, and somebody asked me afterwards one night. I performed as a gymnast for nine years, and then I did acting after that.

  • I was very energetic and very small. I didn't start growing until the last year of high school.

  • I like to stay home with my family.

  • I think I've always had to pick and choose whatever I want to work on. If I'm not happy with what I'm doing, it's probably not going to end up that interesting.

  • I'm one of the actors who really enjoys working with kids and animals, which is always a no go. There's something beautiful about it because you tend to forget yourself as an actor.

  • If you have to be frightening, you need some actors around you to be really frightened. And if they're not frightened, you're not so frightening anymore. In the same way, people say, 'I think you come in, and you're really sexy'. But how do you play sexy? It depends on the eyes that are looking.

  • I come from a culture where you don't divide it up to what you can do on TV and what you can do on film.

  • I have the strange ability to shut things out.

  • Denmark is a small place. We all know each other.

  • I'm not looking for a challenge, necessarily. I'm looking to make a really great film.

  • I have an older brother who is an actor as well.

  • The script is always the main preparation for me. Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it, but if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.

  • I've always been interested in strange foods, coming from all different places.

  • Sometimes you're trying your best and you still can't find a solution, but I try not to waste my life living in a dark place.

  • Danish film is spreading in a fantastic way.

  • One thing I can say about the French language is that no one in the world loves their language as much as they do.

  • If you believe in Odin and Thor, people laugh themselves to death. While it's okay to believe in a man who turned water into wine, and walked on water

  • I'd rather be voted 'the sexiest man in Denmark' than 'the ugliest man in Denmark'.

  • 'Clash Of The Titans' is one of the biggest movies I've done; it was certainly the most effects I've worked with.

  • We were in love with 'Mean Streets' and 'Taxi Driver.' We had no idea why nothing remotely like that was done in Denmark.

  • I watched westerns when I was a kid, like everybody else, but I wasn't a total nerd or geek about it. I kind of fell in love with westerns heavily when I started watching Sergio Leone's westerns.

  • I did a crazy version of 'Romeo and Juliet' once, and I played Romeo.

  • I like 'The Three Musketeers.' I like those kind of cool things where they were having a robe and a sword.

  • I'm not the kind of actor who runs around and insists on being called Stravinsky by everybody, and my family has to call me Igor. I'm not that kind of actor. I think that's pretentious.

  • If you're not bruised up, then you're not doing an action film in a real way.

  • I've always been extremely physical. I was a gymnast for 15 years, and then I was a dancer for nine, so I was kind of looking for these parts. But we have a tendency in Denmark not to do many action films.

  • If you spend a week at a casino you will very easily see that people have a certain way of behaving in a casino.

  • I was not into sci-fi, science fiction, at all. I was into some of the old pirate films with Burt Lancaster and stuff. I liked them.

  • Machiavelli had some cold tricks for people who wanted to be demagogues and wanted to take over the world.

  • I have an enormous metabolism, so I'm lucky.

  • I don't wear cologne. I do occasionally, but anytime I take a shower, I just put on deodorant. That's basically what I smell like.

  • I was a gymnast for many years before I was a dancer, so it comes in pretty handy when we do stunts.

  • We have no chance to comprehend what goes on there - it's so dramatic, and people are so poor. We all felt bad about being there. Filming in India felt like we were going to borrow something knowing that we were never going to give it back.

  • The problem is that you can't really read a script saying, 'Hmmm, I'll just see what this is.' You have to go right into it; you have to get engaged with it, and once you are engaged, you want to do it! It's really difficult to get uninvolved.

  • There's been no real reason to move to LA. The stuff I've done for America has been done in Europe anyway. We made a decision early on that we'd find our base and not shake the children's world as much as mine.

  • In Denmark, we're making 20 films a year. If I'm showing up in even two of those, people will get tired of me really fast.

  • I've never been a big fan of making telepathy to the audience. That would be too much a wink in the eye. That would make people around me fools, right?

  • If I do my very best, then the camera and the audience will follow me, and eventually they will somehow feel like I feel. I don't have to show it to them. I don't have to speak it out loud.

  • Once in a while, when I'm out on the lawn, I'll jump around and do a couple of things. Here's a secret: The older you get, the more difficult it gets. The smallest little injury stays with you for so long. But that's how it goes, and it doesn't stop me. I'm always ready to do something that hurts a little!

  • I'm engaged to Hollywood. If there's something I find I have to do, I'll do it. Otherwise, I'll just stay home and have a vacation.

  • I like to stay home with my family. But travel is good in a way. It makes you redefine each other each time you see each other. Also, it helps that I think my wife is the hottest woman in the world.

  • I take my work enormously seriously. When I do something, it has to feel right. Everything has to be right.

  • If I was doing 'The Hunt' constantly, I would get very old, very fast.

  • If David Bowie wants, I'll put him in my phone book.

  • Once you do one bad guy, usually all you get offered is bad guys.

  • Awards mean absolutely nothing if you don't get it. If you do get it, they're the best thing in the world.

  • If you're playing the bad guy, you have to find what you like about them.

  • I'm not ambitious about my career, but I am ambitious with each job. I can be fairly annoying to work with.

  • Actors are very good at not revealing anything, so they're safe.

  • All actors have to believe that our characters have a point that makes sense. Hopefully, they make sense to the crowd watching it, but at least he has to make sense in his own mind, in his own universe.

  • Everybody wants a big crowd. You get amazed sometimes with certain things that millions of people are watching and you go, "Serious?! Really?!" And then, there are things that you really, really enjoy and not a lot of people are watching. It's very, very hard to predict how it works.

  • Everyone who makes a Star Wars film wants to make it their own but they also have to be true to the concept.

  • 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.

  • I became a dancer late and an actor late.

  • I choose work with the people I like to work with.

  • I come from a culture where you don't divide it up to what you can do on TV and what you can do on film,

  • I do read some of the scripts from America and, even though the themes or subject of the film is very interesting, and some of the scenes are very interesting, there is a tendency that they have to explain everything. There will be no dilemma. This guy was evil, and this girl was very sweet. And in the end, we'd have to see eight endings because we'd also have to know what happened to the uncle. It's like, "Are you kidding me?!"

  • I dont wear cologne. I do occasionally, but anytime I take a shower, I just put on deodorant. Thats basically what I smell like.

  • I guess they have to label someone the sexiest person in the world, and it is always someone who is on telly even if it's the weatherman. For a couple of years it was me and then it was someone else. It's nicer being the sexiest man than the most ugly man. I live with it, and I don't mind it, but I don't go around with a big smile on my face everyday.

  • I have a three-piece suit. I'm an art collector. I have a funny accent. So I'm probably the killer.

  • 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 think 40 years ago, it would have been a little bit different because people had a tendency to think the actor was their part. I do find people who, all of a sudden, realize who is sitting in the restaurant and the first thing they react on is not necessarily, "There's that actor," but it's, "There's that killer guy."

  • I think it would be pretty cool if my kids were super kids.

  • I think the days are over where we were okay with bad guys just doing the pirate laugh and eating kids just for fun. There has to be a goal, you know? They have to have a point, and they have to make sense.

  • I think the meaning of life is life itself. We don't necessarily want to know what it is, but we want to live it. Hopefully, we'll go out fast without knowing it.

  • I was a gymnast for many years before I was a dancer, so it comes in pretty handy when I do stunts.

  • I would have turned any offer down, if it had turned into a thriller. I would have seen no point in a thriller here. I don't need to entertain people, on top of what we were doing. It's not a question of whether he did it or not. I would have thought that was banal and uninteresting, and I wouldn't care. And it could have also turned into a shoot-out because there were a lot of guns in the film.

  • 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.

  • I'd just love to see the next Star Wars films when they come out because I'm very into the whole universe and the stories. So they're always rewarding.

  • 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.

  • I'm a big fan of film for one reason: because it is visual.

  • I'm in a very lucky position. You have to remember that 95 percent of all actors aren't working. I'm actually able to go to France and work. It's a situation I couldn't have dreamt up.

  • I'm one of the actors who really enjoys working with kids and animals, which is always a no go. There's something beautiful about it because you tend to forget yourself, as an actor.

  • I'm terrified about psychic people who have their little shops.

  • I'm very dedicated to the things I do.

  • I've always been extremely physical.

  • Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it but, if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.

  • The criteria [to take or refuse the role] is that I would love to have some kind of dialogue or communication with the director. I need to understand that we can communicate and that we like communication. That's something I have to have a strong feeling about. Secondly, I have to find the script intriguing or interesting. I don't have to understand the whole script, but I do have to find it intriguing. If those two things are present, that would probably be a yes.

  • When you do a TV show, there's always the fear that it will become tired and you'll know exactly what's going to happen.

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