Quote Of The Day: Mads Mikkelsen On Commitment

Mads Mikkelsen is perhaps best known for bringing to life the titular killer in NBC’s “Hannibal,” but the prolific actor has steadily made an impact since his 1996 debut film “Pusher.” 

Mikkelsen achieved worldwide recognition for playing the cold, calculating antagonist in the acclaimed James Bond flick “Casino Royale.” The actor went on to play similarly complex characters in “Doctor Strange,” “Rogue One,” “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” 

Mikkelsen won the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actor for Thomas Vinterberg’s “The Hunt.” He also received a BAFTA nomination for his breathtaking portrayal of a middle-aged everyman in “Another Round.” His prominent television credits include Allan Fischer in the Danish crime drama “Unit One” and a guest appearance in the sitcom “Klovn.”

Mikkelsen brings an astonishing amount of nuance to every character on both the big and small screens, which is why he is today’s quote of the day.

“I think commitment should go all the way, but never to the degree where you become blind. It is a fine balance, and somebody has to go pull on your shoulder sometimes, but I do believe commitment has to be like that; on behalf of the project — unlike on behalf of your career, where I think your commitment should be non-existent.”

The above quote comes from a 2023 interview with The Talks. When asked about the key to striking a balance between listening to one’s gut and trusting the collaborative process, Mikkelsen explained that commitment to a role should never cause an actor get tunnel vision.

“It’s this balance: do you strangle it, or do you let go a little?” the actor mused, emphasizing that the vision for a role must serve only the character or the project as a whole.

To explain his perspective in the aforementioned interview, Mikkelsen referenced Ludvig Kahlen, his character in Nikolaj Arcel’s “The Promised Land.” As a narrow-minded soldier dedicated to Denmark’s King Frederik V in the 1700s, Kahlen doesn’t care about the bigger picture beyond following the terrifying colonizer’s orders. 

“My character is a soldier taking orders from the king; he only has the goal in mind, so everything else is just stepping stones that don’t matter in his life,” Mikkelsen said. Although Kahlen’s ambition is fueled by a need to escape his unfortunate circumstances, this drive turns into a single-minded obsession that leaves him cold toward others.

To bring things full circle, Mikkelsen also affirmed that he firmly pushes back whenever the collaborative process appears to drift away from the vision. “If we’re going in the wrong direction, I will insist: we have to go this way, because if not, we’re just serving the crowd, and we want to serve the character,” the actor shared.

• “When you do forget the camera, and you have something, you feel active. You can sense something is happening inside of you, and hopefully the camera catches that, and hopefully that’s also what the audience will see. Many actors do have that sensation, but that has nothing to do with beauty. That’s more to do with feeling that we were present in the moment.” — from a 2021 interview with Vulture
  
• “It takes two to tango; it takes two people to become human. It’s very, very difficult to be a human being all by yourself.” — from a 2019 interview with The Independent
  
• “Hopefully my family is going to remember me as somebody who loved them tremendously. If we’re talking about audiences, I would love to be remembered as the person who had a certain variety of work behind them and did his best.” — from a 2013 interview with GQ