Quotes from Mads Mikkelsen

I did a TV show called 'Unit 1.' It wasn't a bad experience, but yes, the first season I didn't have a good time because I was coming from Nicolas Winding Refn films where the corners were sharp and radical, but now we had round corners.

I can never wink at the audience.

I've never been a big fan of making telepathy to the audience. That would be too much a wink in the eye. That would make people around me fools, right?

I do read some of the scripts from America and, even though the themes or subject of the film is very interesting, and some of the scenes are very interesting, there is a tendency that they have to explain everything. There will be no dilemma.

Before we made films about gangsters, everything was about the royal families. They contain so much drama.

I always try to find something I like about the bad guys and then try to find the mistakes and the flaws in the good guys.

A solid family, as they say. They join me on location if they have a chance, but I can also be home three or four months doing nothing, so I probably see my kids more than people who work constantly all year long. If that changes, we'll have to have a family meeting.

There's been no real reason to move to LA. The stuff I've done for America has been done in Europe anyway. We made a decision early on that we'd find our base and not shake the children's world as much as mine.

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.

TV is obviously so different from film: because it's a never-ending process, it keeps going; you keep receiving new pages.

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.

'Clash Of The Titans' is one of the biggest movies I've done; it was certainly the most effects I've worked with.

In Denmark, we're making 20 films a year. If I'm showing up in even two of those, people will get tired of me really fast.

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

Predominantly I'm an Adidas guy who walks around in sports gear all the time because there's always a ball right next to me somewhere. I do a lot of sports, but I do enjoy wearing a lot of suits.

I was into sports and swimming as a kid and didn't spend a whole lot of time sitting down. I was a gymnast.

I like to stay home with my family. But travel is good in a way. It makes you redefine each other each time you see each other. Also, it helps that I think my wife is the hottest woman in the world.

If I was doing 'The Hunt' constantly, I would get very old, very fast.

I was a very focused kid. I always had this crazy lifestyle... billions of jobs, two hours of gymnastics every day, handball, anything with a ball, really. I must have had ADHD or something. I was very energetic, and very small. I didn't start growing until the last year of high school.

When I was a kid, I wasn't looking at the small-budget films myself. I was looking at 'James Bond' and all the major films, so I still have that energy. I still love those films.

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.

In a way, we tried to make 'The Salvation' a contemporary film with contemporary emotions. At the same time, in the script, you get a feel that all the small talk is not a part of our universe. It's more precise talk.

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

I have an enormous metabolism, so I'm lucky.