Danish Pusher, Bond villain: EFA honours Mads Mikkelsen

by Jorn Rossing Jensen

31/10/2011 - ”I accept this award with great humbleness and a big smile,” said Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, when the European Film Academy notified him that he would be presented with the European Achievement in World Cinema 2011 award at the prize ceremony on December 3 in Berlin. ”Seeing the list of former recipients, all giants, and realising that people outside my family keep an eye on my work makes me deeply grateful.”

With his current cinema repertoire as Comte de Rochefort in US director Paul W.S. Anderson’s The Three Musketeers [trailer], Mikkelsen has just finished his starring role in French director Arnaud de Pallères’ Michael Kohlhaas, another take on Heinrich von Kleist’s 1611 novella produced by Les Films d’Ici, with Bruno Ganz and Sergi Lopez.

After his screen debut in Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher (1996), he was a regular in local films by, among others, Anders Thomas Jensen and Susanne Bier; his international career took off when he played the villainous Le Chiffre opposite Agent 007 James Bond in Casino Royale (2006) [trailer]. Since then, he has hardly had a day off.

Twice nominated for the European Film Award (Danish directors Bier’s After the Wedding (2006) [trailer, film focus], Ole Christian Madsen’s Flame & Citron (2008) [trailer]), Mikkelsen regularly returns to Danish cinema, most recently in Nikolaj Arcel’s 18th century drama, A Royal Affair, about the romance between the Danish Queen and the King’s German physician-in-ordinary (Alicia Vikander).

Starring in US-Dutch director Jan Kounen’s Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky (2009) [trailer], his present dance card includes UK director Niall Johnson’s adventure western, The Stolen, with Melissa George; US directors Eric D Howell’s thriller, Voice from the Stone with Maggie Gyllenhaal and Rodrigo Gudino’s spaghetti western remake, Cut Throats Nine with Harvey Keitel.