From Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts to Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, Mads Mikkelsen played many villains across his illustrious career. He recently addressed this phenomenon and shared a theory on why he’s so often cast as the bad guy in American movies.
Mikkelsen received the honorary Etoile d’Or award at this year’s Marrakech Film Festival, where he’s also promoting his new film The Promised Land. He was a part of the festival’s masterclass program, and some interesting questions came up while he was chatting with the audience.
At one point, Mikkelsen was asked to share his thoughts about frequently playing villains in popular franchises. He blamed “funny accent” for his casting in these roles, saying that Hollywood fell in love with the Danish accent for some reason.
“Then if the Americans see something they like, they have a tendency to try and copy it. I’ve been lucky enough to do different villains in different universes… I never think about it too much. In Denmark, we don’t divide it into bad guys and good guys, we tend to look at more complex characters,” he explained.
Mikkelsen has been a household name in his home country of Denmark for over two decades, but his global rise to prominence started with the role of Le Chiffre in the James Bond film Casino Royale. He went on to play many bad guys in the years to come, in such high-profile projects as Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and the TV series Hannibal.
