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Mads Mikkelsen has distinguished himself across his career with his ability to move between arthouse hits in his native Denmark and big Hollywood franchises such as James Bond, Doctor Strange, Star Wars, Fantastic Beasts and Indiana Jones.
The actor was quizzed in a Marrakech Film Festival masterclass on Saturday about the fact that he tends to be cast as a flawed hero in Europe and the bad guy in Hollywood, such as Marvel supervillain Kaecilius or Le Chiffre in Casino Royal.
“It’s quite simple. It’s the funny accent. It’s as simple as that. It used to be Germans, then it was Brits; then the Russians, and then for some reason they fell in love with the Danish accent. That’s definitely part of it,” he said.
“Then if the Americans see something they like, they have a tendency to try and copy it, right. But I’ve been lucky enough to do different villains in different universes. There’s a big difference between Marvel and James Bond… but I never think about it too much. In Denmark, we don’t divide it into bad guys and good guys, we tend look at more complex characters.”
Mikkelsen is a recipient of the honorary Etoile d’Or career prize of the Marrakech Film Festival this year, which is also holding a gala screening of his new film and Denmark’s Oscar entry The Promised Land.
The masterclass saw him talking to a packed cinema filled with a young, lively crowd of predominantly aspiring actors and filmmakers.
One young actress asked Mikkelsen for advice on acting in a non-mother tongue film.
“I’ve done quite a few films in different languages, none of them I speak or at least not fluently,” he said. “The trick the first time I did anything in English was to rehearse it and rehearse it and then, once you shoot the scene that’s it, it’s over. Don’t think about it anymore. If there are mistakes, if people out there are going, ‘Oh my God, what an accent’. So be it. That’s all I could do.
“Forget it once you get in there, focus on the scene. You cannot be on stage or in front of the camera, focusing on the language. The worst-case scenario is you can fix it later in the ADR sessions later on.”
The actor said that it was important that the director was on the same page and willing to accept an accented performance.
“If they anticipate a perfect language with no accent whatsoever, you should tell them to find someone else.”
Quizzed on whether there was one director he felt a special affinity with across his some 60 film and TV credits, Mikkelsen said he was not got going to compare “apples and pears”.
“I try to make them all equally important. Everything I do is the most important thing, the next thing I do it’s the most important thing in my job. It will be the best field in history. That’s the goal. Luckily, we never achieved that so we get another chance,” he said.
“I’m not going to compare oranges and apples. Each one has changed my career, or been a stepping stone to something else, everyone has been part of that. So, if they’re not equally important, I love them all.”
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