Mads Mikkelsen reveals what it takes to play ultimate movie villain in Indiana Jones
Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen has become Hollywood’s go-to villain from Casino Royale, to Hannibal and now Indiana Jones’s last ride.
For more than a decade now, Hollywood powerbrokers have had two names on speed-dial when looking for blockbuster villains – Ben Mendelsohn and Mads Mikkelsen.
Since his breakout role as a scheming, amoral gangster in Animal Kingdom, the Aussie actor known to all and sundry as Mendo has broken bad in top-line TV and film projects including The Dark Knight Rises, Bloodline, Rogue One, Robin Hood and Ready Player One.
In the same period, Danish star Mikkelsen, who wowed critics with his shifty, blood-teared Bond villain Le Chiffre in 2007’s Casino Royale, has made audiences’ skin crawl in the title role of TV spin-off Hannibal as well in huge franchises from Doctor Strange to Fantastic Beasts.
But oddly, says Mikkelsen, doing promo for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny in Los Angeles while Mendo is a couple of rooms away talking up his new Marvel TV project Secret Invasion, the pair have never had to go head-to-head for the same parts.
“Good, old Ben,” Mikkelsen says fondly of the man he became fast friends with while playing enemies on Rogue One, a rare Hollywood heroic outing for the Dane. “I don’t think we crossed each other that way.”
But did the pair ever compare notes about how to villain over a few beers during breaks on the 2016 Star Wars prequel?
“Not that much actually,” says Mikkelsen, “he’s not a big drinker but he is a funny man. Every single break we had on that film, after every single take there was another insane idea coming out of him. It’s really difficult not to laugh when you are with him.”
Originally a gymnast and a dancer, Mikkelsen was already a star in the country he still calls home when Hollywood came calling for Casino Royale. But so successful has he become in lending his talents to big-budget franchise films that he and a friend were jokingly ticking them off after a few drinks a couple of years back.
“It’s kind of a big thing for a Danish guy,” says Mikkelsen with a laugh.
Mikkelsen’s mate jotted down one glaring absence – the long-running and much loved Indiana Jones series, which began with Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981 but had been dormant since the fourth film, 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Little did he know that on the other side of the Atlantic, the creators of the fifth and final film had him in mind to play Indy’s Nazi nemesis Jurgen Voller, who is also hunting for the titular Dial of Destiny that is rumoured to have time-travelling properties.
Director James Mangold, stepping into the shoes of the great Steven Spielberg, recalls the casting director floating Mikkelsen’s name and his response was “well, you can send him the script but he’s never going to do it”.
Mangold had envisioned Voller as “kind of an Indiana Jones of Nazi Germany”, an intellectual, academic, and scientist much like the villain of the original film, Dr Rene Belloq. He thought Mikkelsen, who he describes as “one of the most sophisticated and wonderful actors working today” would be a perfect foil for Harrison Ford’s Indy – if he agreed to do it.
“Twenty-four hours later, I got an email from him and he’s like, ‘I can’t wait!’,” says Mangold. “To me, that was startling and it was also another evidence of the power of Indiana Jones.”
And after playing so many bad guys, Mikkelsen has a strange sort of pride in playing one of cinema’s ultimate villains, and a crucial part of the Indiana Jones universe from the very beginning.
“My first Nazi,” he beams. “It’s interesting because in interviews like this I am almost trying to defend what is their mission, what is their goal, what’s behind that dark heart? And it’s really tricky, right? Because he’s a Nazi and that is what it is. But he’s also a scientist and I am glad I did my first Nazi in an Indiana Jones film because they belong there.”
Mikkelsen was still in his teens when he first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark – but like millions of others around the world it made a lasting impression. The way he tells it, he and his brother rented a box of five movies on VHS and then watched Raiders five times in a row and ignored the others. As to why the movies are still going strong (even the critically reviled Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made close to US$800 million 15 years ago) more than four decades later, Mikkelsen is unsure.
“That’s the money question isn’t it?,” he says. “If we all knew why it’s a success and why it works the way it does, everyone would try to copy it. But it’s the story, it’s the charm, it’s Spielberg and it’s Harrison. He just brings something to that character that we want to be him – that lying, stealing, son of a B that is so charming at the same time. And that’s what makes him a great hero.”
The Dial of Destiny is set in 1969 at the height of the space race, with both Indy and Voller, who had first crossed paths in World War II, not just chasing the same artefact but also wrestling with their place in a world they barely understand.
Much has been made of the de-ageing technology that enables the 80-year-old Ford – and the 57-year-old Mikkelsen – to play a younger versions of themselves in the opening stretch of the film instead of casting other actors. While Mikkelsen says he thinks he looks “not too shabby” as a younger man and is comfortable with how the digital trickery is used in this film, he also says “obviously we are not looking forward to the day that they don’t need us anymore”.
Similar technology has been used to insert 1977-era Carrie Fisher and the now-deceased Peter Cushing into Rogue One – and was also used to crowbar a reluctant Sean Young’s physical likeness into Blade Runner 2049 – and Mikkelsen admits to being wary of where it might end.
“We have to find a moral limit to that,” he says. “I’m sure that people will go all the way into crazy stuff and so be it. I think this is a fine level and there was good reason why we did it in this film but too many steps further than that and it’s a little scary for us. But then there’s always theatre – we have that left.”
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is in cinemas on June 29.
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Originally published as Mads Mikkelsen reveals what it takes to play ultimate movie villain in Indiana Jones
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