Mads Mikkelsen's Real Name: Mads Mikkelsen

Quick answer: Mads Mikkelsen is known professionally as Mads Mikkelsen. The Library of Congress heading is "Mikkelsen, Mads, 1965-." The Danish Film Institute records that he was born in 1965, worked as a professional dancer for eight years, then entered theatre school and graduated in 1996 (Danish Film Institute). He is a Danish actor known for Pusher, Casino Royale, The Hunt, and the television series Hannibal.

Real name and early life

The DFI's 2012 profile gives only the year 1965. A more precise date and a Copenhagen neighborhood appearing in some databases are documented there through IMDb citations in the Library of Congress record and are not used in the title. The same DFI profile is the source for the eight years as a professional dancer and the 1996 theatre-school graduation, after which, it says, he had his screen breakthrough the same year.

Career highlights

Mikkelsen's screen breakthrough, the DFI says, came the same year he graduated, as Tonny in Nicolas Winding Refn's Pusher (1996). He continued to work with Refn and with Danish directors including Anders Thomas Jensen, Susanne Bier, and Ole Christian Madsen. The DFI highlights later Danish roles such as Svend in The Green Butchers (2003) and Father Ivan in Adam's Apples (2005). In 2006 he reached a much wider audience as the Bond villain Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, opposite Daniel Craig.

A 2015 DFI profile reviews subsequent work including the nearly wordless lead in Valhalla Rising (2006), a Cannes best-actor prize for Thomas Vinterberg's The Hunt (2012), in which he played a kindergarten teacher targeted by a false accusation, the Oscar-nominated Danish historical drama A Royal Affair, in which the DFI says he was a romantic lead, and the television role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal (the DFI dates the series from 2013). That later profile also mentions a heroic role in Kristian Levring's western The Salvation and the offbeat comedy Men & Chicken (2015). This page stays with those documented credits and does not add later, unsourced titles.

Name notes for searchers

Mads Mikkelsen is the name used by the Danish Film Institute and by the Library of Congress. Searchers looking for Le Chiffre, for the lead in The Hunt, or for Hannibal Lecter in the 2010s series are usually aiming at the same person.