When Mads Mikkelsen arrived on set to make his new film, a historical drama called The Promised Land, he was surprised to discover that some of the younger members of the cast were nervous about meeting him. On reflection, he could appreciate what they were feeling. “I do Hollywood films and I can just stand in the shadows,” the actor says. “It’s easy because, like, that’s Harrison Ford right there. I can stand back.
“It’s a little different at home. I’m myself every day. I go out. And then somebody wants a photo. On The Promised Land we realised during the casting that some of the actors had watched me since they were young. I had never thought about this, because I’m just me. So we had to get all that out of the way. I’m just another actor. I’m another human being. And the best way to do that was to have a couple of beers.”
His role in The Promised Land (whose Danish title is Bastarden, or The Bastard) is the latest in a series of physically demanding parts for an actor who has shared screen time with a polar bear, in the 2018 film Arctic, and weathered the worst of Scottish weather as a Norse serf, in Valhalla Rising.
“Promised Land wasn’t so bad,” he says. “It was dirty and cold, but there was a trailer I could run into for heat. With Valhalla Rising we were in the middle of nowhere. And with Arctic I was in the Arctic Circle. There was nowhere to hide. I just had to suck it up.”