The “humiliating” 2004 audition Mads Mikkelsen abandoned in disgust: “I’m sorry, this is wrong”
Despite having almost a decade of experience under his belt and being designated as one of the most exciting homegrown stars to emerge in Danish cinema for years, Mads Mikkelsen found out the hard way that the path to cracking Hollywood isn’t always paved in gold.
In his defence, it was in a way, since it was his memorable performance as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale that put him on the international map, setting the stage for the last two decades, where he’s flitted between mainstream Hollywood roles and supporting parts in blockbusters, without sacrificing his loyalty to homegrown movies.
It was only his second taste of studio filmmaking after Antoine Fuqua’s forgettable historical epic, King Arthur. In between those two big-budget pictures, Mikkelsen endured a ritual humiliation when he landed himself an audition for a comic book adaptation, and it didn’t take him long to realise that he was the wrong guy in the wrong room at the wrong time.
Many actors have bemoaned the art, or lack thereof, of standing on a green screen set and pretending to interact with things that aren’t there, but imagine doing it in an audition. That was where Mikkelsen found himself when he read for the part of Reed Richards in Tim Story’s Fantastic Four, and things were going so badly that he decided the best option was to pack up instead of embarrassing himself any further.
“I find it rude to ask people to come into a room and say one line while pretending you have 80-foot arms like the rubber man,” he reflected, recalling the bizarre instructions he was given. “‘Grab that cup of coffee over there,'” Mikkelsen added. “It’s like, are you crazy? There’s not even a scene here. It was kind of humiliating.”
With his arm-waving clearly not up to scratch, there was only one reasonable option left on the table: to fuck off. “I think I walked out on the Fantastic Four one,” the star noted. “I think I actually said, ‘I can’t do it. It’s not about you. I’m sorry, this is wrong.'” You know it was a bad audition when his excuse for cutting it short was basically, “It’s not you, it’s me.”
In the end, Ioan Gruffudd was announced as the rubber man with 80-foot arms in the summer of 2004, and Mikkelsen’s lingering memory is that he never wanted to subject himself to anything like that again. “This is fucking mad,” he recalled. “You feel like an idiot.” Idiot or not, those parts tend to pay more than most, so he hasn’t been entirely against the odd effects-heavy gig every now and then.
More than a decade later, he finally got his chance to appear in a Marvel movie, but the circumstances were markedly different. Instead of jumping through hoops and disgracing himself in another audition, Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson directly offered him the role of the villainous Kaecilius, and he was much more amenable the second time around.
Why? Because the filmmaker pitched him three words, and he was in: “Scott said the magic words to me,” Mikkelsen revealed. “He said, ‘Flying kung fu’. I was sold completely.” It was a far cry from some guy in a room asking him to reach for a coffee cup with ridiculously elongated arms he had to pretend he possessed, but he’d come a long way since then.
