Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter in Hannibal

The mention of his name sends a chill down the spine of the bravest. In 2003, Hannibal Lecter (as portrayed by Anthony Hopkins) was chosen by the American Film Institute as the number one movie villain. Empire magazine lists Lecter as the fifth “greatest movie character of all time”. In June 2010, Entertainment Weekly named him one of “the 100 greatest characters of the last 20 years”... you get the drift. Hannibal Lecter is quite a character! And Bond baddie (Casino Royale, 2006) Mads Mikkelsen plays this character in the small-screen outing of Hannibal (Friday, 10pm on AXN). An email chat with t2...

Hannibal Lecter is an iconic bad guy, pretty much synonymous with Anthony Hopkins. Were you apprehensive about fitting into the rather large shoes of Hopkins?

Yes, I might have been. But again, if every person in the world who is playing Hamlet was looking at the other one playing Hamlet, they would not do it, right? So we can’t think like that. This is a different story, a different outfit. We have a couple of iconic actors who have made this to perfection... and, of course, I’m thinking about Anthony Hopkins specifically. So we can’t copy that. That would be certain death. Having said that, the character is the character. He loves fine arts. He loves food. Everything banal, he hates. And he wears a three-piece suit.

The creators apparently had to re-pitch Hannibal Lecter to you as a real human with real emotions. How different is your approach to playing the character?

We are starting out in a different scenario than we did with his character; he was entrapped, he was caught and we are starting when he’s free... he’s a practising psychiatrist and for that reason, you will see, hopefully, some different angles to him. But having said that, he’s not a classic psychopath or sociopath, he’s something else. I would put him closer to... the devil. The devil has an access to what he’s doing. There’s a purity to it. It’s not because of his upbringing. It’s not because his mom did something. It’s because he’s fascinated with life that’s on the threshold of death. That’s where the beauty of life lies. So he has to be, to a degree, normal when people are looking at him and a little abnormal when they’re not.

Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs

Did you incorporate traces of Hopkins’s Lecter or did you intentionally stay away?

Those are big shoes, right? He did it to perfection and we’re not trying to copy it, but we cannot detach totally from the character. I think we will see him in situations that we did not see Anthony in. You can’t copy but you can’t be afraid either.

What kind of preparation and research did you have to do for the role?

Well, the script is very, very important, but I actually got the books (by Thomas Harris) for the fun of it... to see if there was some information in there. There was a lot, but we will not go to all those places. Yes, it was helpful. We learn as we go on. And it’s very different than making a film where you know what you’re doing from A to Z. Here, we have to be open... and it’s fun.

Why is everyone so fascinated by Hannibal Lecter and his world?

I think the dark side of human nature has always been fascinating. There’s drama in there and we always want true understanding... not necessarily embrace it but we’re fascinated and we want to understand what’s happening. And you could say the same about the big biographies of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler; people buy them because it’s fascinating to understand what went on in there. And I think that goes with this character as well.

Mikkelsen as Le Chiffre in Casino Royale

Is there a part of Hannibal Lecter that stays with you even after pack-up?

The discussion about method acting or not is always going to be there and I’ve always found it quite pretentious, in the sense that my job is to get inside the character really fast and leave him as fast as I can. If I were to bring home every character I’ve played, my family would be very confused! And I don’t necessarily think that it will add anything.

You’ve played a lot of bad guys on screen, most famously Le Chiffre in Casino Royale. Do you naturally gravitate towards negative roles considering that they have a lot more character and complexity than the average good guy?

I don’t see it as bad. I try as much as I can to make him the good guy in my world. I always thought that they go hand in hand, the good guys and the bad guys. You have to find flaws, the little holes, the little mistakes they’re doing... the good guys... and you have to find something you recognise in the bad guy. You have to find something that you can humanise in him. For me, it’s two sides of the same coin. Obviously this guy has a dark side and he is a bad guy... yes. But I’m trying to raise him as if he’s seeing the world in a different way.

How would you describe the dynamics between Lecter and Hugh Dancy’s Will (criminal profiler and hunter of serial killers)?

The very first thing I worked on abroad was a film called King Arthur and Hugh was in that one. So, we spent six months on a horse together. Little Broke Man Mountain? No! So yes, we’ve known each other for years and I’ve always liked him and I think he likes me as well. And then it was just a fantastic opportunity to get to work more intensely together in this one. Will is in many ways a strange character, in the sense that he has this enormous ability of having empathy for other people. He has a hard time controlling that empathy and I mirror myself in that because I have an enormous amount of empathy and I know how to use it. So, that means I recognise myself in that. I see a little brother in there and he doesn’t know how to use his tools, but I will hopefully teach him.

Priyanka Roy