Mads Mikkelsen

Mads Dittmann Mikkelsen (born 22 November 1965) is a Danish actor. He rose to fame in Denmark as an actor for his roles such as Tonny in the first two films of the Pusher film trilogy. He achieved worldwide recognition for playing the main antagonist Le Chiffre in the twenty-first James Bond film, Casino Royale. His other roles include Igor Stravinsky in Coco Chanel & Igor Stavinsky, Johann Friedrich Struensee in A Royal Affair, Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the TV series Hannibal, Kaecilius in Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Galen Erso in Lucasfilm’s Rogue One, Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts film series and Cliff Unger

About Mads Mikkelsen in brief

Summary Mads MikkelsenMads Dittmann Mikkelsen (born 22 November 1965) is a Danish actor. He rose to fame in Denmark as an actor for his roles such as Tonny in the first two films of the Pusher film trilogy and Detective Sergeant Allan Fischer in the television series Rejseholdet. He achieved worldwide recognition for playing the main antagonist Le Chiffre in the twenty-first James Bond film, Casino Royale. His other roles include Igor Stravinsky in Coco Chanel & Igor Stavinsky, Johann Friedrich Struensee in A Royal Affair, Dr. Hannibal Lecter in the TV series Hannibal, Kaecilius in Marvel’s Doctor Strange, Galen Erso in Lucasfilm’s Rogue One, Gellert Grindelwald in the Fantastic Beasts film series and Cliff Unger in Hideo Kojima’s video game Death Stranding. In 2005, he portrayed anorthodox vicar named Ivan who challenges a neo-Nazi who has been sentenced to community service to bake an apple pie in Adam’s Apples. He was a professional dancer for almost a decade until he left it behind to study drama at the Århus Theatre School in 1996, embarking on a career in acting. He made his film debut in 1996 as a drug dealer in Nicolas Winding Refn’s internationally successful film Pusher, which would later spawn two sequels. In 1999, he had a leading role as Lenny, a shy film expert who suffers from avoidant personality disorder, opposite Kim Bodnia inrefn’s Bleeder.

In 2000, he played a gangster opposite Søren Pilmark, Ulrich Thomsen and Nikolaj Lie Kaas in Anders Thomas Jensen’s Copenhagen gangster movie, Flickering Lights. The following year, he gained wider popularity when he starred in the gay comedy Shake It All About. In 2002, Mikkelson had a starring role as a young doctor who falls in love with the girlfriend of one of his patients in Open Hearts which earned him both Robert and Bodil nominations in 2003 for best actor. In 2003, he starred opposite Kaas, playing an orphaned butcher’s assistant in a small provincial Danish town, where human meat is a specialty. He won the Fantasporto Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the butcher in The Green Butchers. He starred in Pablo Berger’s Spanish film Torremolinos 73, about an exasperated encyclopedia salesman who exports pornographic films to Scandinavian countries under the pretense of being an audiovisual encyclopedia of human reproduction. His performance in Taxi Driver, likened to De Niro in Martin Scorsese’s The Godfather, earned him the Best Actor Zulu and Robert Festival Award. In 2004, he reprised his role as drug dealer Tonny for Pusher sequel, Pusher II.