It’s completely amazing,” he says.īut like many a busy movie star, Mikkelsen has trouble with technology, and might not be able to check out Polar on his own phone. “I just saw her breaking all the records. Polar also marks Mikkelsen’s first Netflix original film, but he had a primer on the streaming giant last month when Danish director Susanne Bier, a past collaborator on the movie After the Wedding and Open Hearts, released the hit Bird Box. “I was always fascinated with that world, so that when it came my way, it was an obvious ‘yes’ because not having thought about it, I all of a sudden realized that I’ve always been a fan of that world.” I was just absorbed in them,” Mikkelsen says. “I grew up with comic books, and specifically graphic novels. 1 assassin (Mikkelsen) who is lured out of retirement. Netflix’s Polar, which was adapted from the comics series of the same name and will be available for streaming on Friday, gave the actor an opportunity he didn’t realize he wanted, even after Doctor Strange: to play a comic book hero. I didn’t get a chance to go home then,” says Mikkelsen. “ Arctic and Polar, we shot back-to-back. It has resulted in a busy work schedule that sees him shooting about nine months a year. films to the hit television show Hannibal. Now he’s kicking off 2019 with the icy cold films Polar and Arctic. King Arthur was one of many turning points in Mikkelsen’s career, which saw him move from independent Danish projects to U.S. So I was just flabbergasted by the way that the money was spent in an extravagant way.” It was just insane, and I’m not sure we used it too much in the film. And the value of that wall would probably be identical to 10 Danish film budgets. “I remember that they built a wall that was 1.8 miles long, and it was eight meters high and eight meters wide,” Mikkelsen recalls. When he moved to Hollywood productions with Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 film King Arthur, one thing stood out: the scale. “So I was suffering a little more, even though they didn’t get to my genitalia,” says the actor.īefore becoming a blockbuster mainstay in such movies as Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Doctor Strange, Mikkelsen made his mark in Danish cinema after his acting debut in 1996’s Pusher. And it was just brutal as hell.”Īccording to Mikkelsen, the Casino Royale scene was shot in only one day. “That was some brutal days we did in Polar,” he recalls.

Mikkelsen’s torture scene in Polar also involved extended time in low temperatures.

I’m sure I enjoyed it a bit more than he did.” “I definitely prefer to be on the other side,” the actor tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Casino royal nude scene