Top 30 Mads Mikkelsen Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “If you believe in Odin and Thor, people laugh themselves to death. While it’s okay to believe in a man who turned water into wine, and walked on water.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

2. “I’m a beer man. I tried to drink whiskey and Scotch but I don’t get it. It smells like a girl who didn’t shower and just splashed a lot of perfume on.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

3. “I think the meaning of life is life itself. We don’t necessarily want to know what it is, but we want to live it. Hopefully, we’ll go out fast without knowing it.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

4. “If you’re playing the bad guy, you have to find what you like about them.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

5. “I like to stay home with my family.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

6. “I became a dancer late and an actor late.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

Featured in: Quotes About Actors

7. “I’ve always been extremely physical.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

8. “I’m a big fan of film for one reason: because it is visual.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

9. “I have a three-piece suit. I’m an art collector. I have a funny accent. So I’m probably the killer.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

10. “I take my work enormously seriously. When I do something it has to feel right. Everything has to be right. I’m not ambitious about my career, but I am ambitious with each job. I can be fairly annoying to work with. No compromises. Let’s put it this way: compromises are from hell.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

11. “I was a gymnast for many years before I was a dancer, so it comes in pretty handy when I do stunts.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

12. “I choose work with the people I like to work with.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

13. “I ask a million questions, and I insist on having answers. I think that is what we have to do. I have to know what the director wants. Some are very much in their head, and I need to force it out of them. I just can’t play around for eight hours and see if something happens.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

14. “One thing I can say about the French language is that no one in the world loves their language as much as they do.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

15. “The physicality of any character is always split up into fast, slow, high energy, low energy, what kind of personality he has. So that’s where the physicality comes in. And flying through the air is just something you have to do if they ask you.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

16. “I’m terrified about psychic people who have their little shops.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

17. “If you’re not bruised up, then you’re not doing an action film in a real way.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

18. “I have an enormous metabolism, so I’m lucky.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

19. “Once you do one bad guy, usually all you get offered is bad guys.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

20. “II know a little about Greek mythology. It’s not that far away from the Nordic mythology.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

21. “Sometimes you have a period piece where you have to research around it but, if the writers have done their homework well enough, the information is all in the script.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

22. “I tend not to have any references to anything. I just jump into the script in front of me. If you reference too much, you have no idea if the performances are right.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

23. “Danish film is spreading in a fantastic way.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

24. “Sometimes we misunderstand what films can do. We just throw a whole book in there, with people just talking, talking, and talking. The picture can tell, the frame can tell.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

25. “Machiavelli had some cold tricks for people who wanted to be demagogues and wanted to take over the world.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

26. “Actors are very good at not revealing anything, so they’re safe.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

27. “I’m one of the actors who really enjoys working with kids and animals, which is always a no go. There’s something beautiful about it because you tend to forget yourself, as an actor.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

28. “If you spend a week at a casino you will very easily see that people have a certain way of behaving in a casino.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

29. “Everybody wants a big crowd. You get amazed sometimes with certain things that millions of people are watching and you go, “Serious?! Really?!” And then, there are things that you really, really enjoy and not a lot of people are watching. It’s very, very hard to predict how it works.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

30. “I’m not the kind of actor who runs around and insists on being called Stravinsky by everybody, and my family has to call me Igor. I’m not that kind of actor. I think that’s pretentious.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

31. “When you do a TV show, there’s always the fear that it will become tired and you’ll know exactly what’s going to happen.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

32. “I’m not looking for a challenge, necessarily. I’m looking to make a really great film.”

— Mads Mikkelsen

33. “I’m in a very lucky position. You have to remember that 95 percent of all actors aren’t working. I’m actually able to go to France and work. It’s a situation I couldn’t have dreamt up.”

— Mads Mikkelsen