The movie that paid Mads Mikkelsen with a bicycle: “That was the salary”
Mads Mikkelsen is an actor who possesses the unique ability to say so much through a single glance, with a permanent vulnerability in his eyes that can be lent to the hidden darkness or innate goodness of a character, often blending the two together to portray conflicted people or those who’s intentions are more ambiguous. He can play people we both pity and resent, somehow bringing this deeply wounded quality to each character that makes us aware of the multitudes that exist within our own decisions and the complexity of each mistake.
Throughout his career, he’s used this skill in a number of projects, ranging from low-budget to studio movies, although he hasn’t always been compensated in the way you’d expect for someone of his talent.
Mikkelsen exploded onto the Danish independent filmmaking scene in 1996 with Pusher, a gritty drama directed by Nicolas Winding Refn about a drug pusher who is indebted to a dangerous drug lord. It’s shot in the classic guerilla style that we associate with the early Dogme movement, with handheld shots and a documentary-esque style that is firmly rooted in realism. It has a rawer look compared to Refn’s later work, blending in with the low-budget European aesthetic and smoothly adapting to the grit of the story world it captures.
Mikkelsen plays Tonny and is perhaps one of the most unlikeable characters in his filmography. His crazed look exaggerates his mania, leaving us teetering on the edge of expected violence. However, as one of his earliest projects, Mikkelsen was not paid handsomely for his role and was instead offered another means of compensation.
When describing the project, Mikkelsen said, “Well, Pusher was obviously something special. But I got a bicycle for doing that film. A cheap bicycle. That was the salary! And I was actually negotiating very hard with the producer on whether I could get a children’s seat on the back of it. He said no. I’ve known him for many years now, and I love him, but we can still laugh at that negotiation.”
However, the lack of financial stability did not deter him, and Mikkelsen went on to star in some of the most influential films of the Dogme movement, working with Susanne Bier on Open Hearts in 2002, playing a happily married man who finds himself in a car accident, unexpectedly falling in love with the fiancée of the man he hit. He also collaborated with controversial Danish auteur Anders Thomas Jensen on his 2000 film Flickering Lights, which follows a group of gangsters who escape to Barcelona after a botched job.
It seems as though the actor later found better compensation when starring in high-budget movies such as Casino Royale and The Secrets of Dumbledore, the hit television show Hannibal, and an upcoming role in Billion Dollar Spy. It just goes to show that humble beginnings can eventually pay off, and sometimes, it takes a bicycle before you get a real paycheck.
