‘Fantastic Beasts’ Star Mads Mikkelsen Slams Method Acting, Calls It “Bullsh*t”

Actor Mads Mikkelsen‘s roles have run the gamut, from a Bond villain, Le Chiffre in Casino Royale, to a perpetually-drunk professor in the Oscar-winning Danish film Another Round, to his new role as Gellert Grindelwald in Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. And though Mikkelsen admits to being meticulous about preparing for his roles, there’s one thing he will not do, and that is to go Method. In an interview with GQ, Mikkelsen discussed how he works, stating that even though he’s “fairly annoying to work with,” he isn’t as “pretentious” as Method actors.

Actors who employ Method acting famously include Jared Leto, Lady Gaga, Daniel Day-Lewis and Dustin Hoffman. As part of their process, they often stay in character for the duration of a film shoot, even when the cameras aren’t rolling. In addition, they try to emulate the details of their character’s life. Day-Lewis learned dressmaking for his role in Phantom Thread, while Lady Gaga spoke like her character, Patrizia Gucci, in House of Gucci even when she was just calling her parents on the phone. And recently, news broke that Jared Leto hobbled everywhere while filming Morbius, sometimes taking 45 minutes to go to the bathroom. And to that, Mikkelsen says, “It’s bullshit.”

“Preparation, you can take into insanity,” he says. “What if it’s a shit film – what do you think you achieved? Am I impressed that you didn’t drop character? You should have dropped it from the beginning! How do you prepare for a serial killer? You gonna spend two years checking it out?”

Mikkelsen also says that if he were ever to appear in a film with someone like Day-Lewis, he would have a grand time trying to poke holes in his co-star’s Method approach. “I would have the time of my life, just breaking down the character constantly,” he says. “‘I’m having a cigarette? This is from 2020, it’s not from 1870 – can you live with it?’ It’s just pretentious. Daniel Day-Lewis is a great actor. But it’s got nothing to do with this.”

Mikkelsen adds that the idea of Method acting has been inflated by the press, which often focuses on actors who do extreme things in order to prepare for their roles. “The media goes, ‘Oh my god, he took it so seriously, therefore he must be fantastic; let’s give him an award.’ Then that’s the talk, and everybody knows about it, and it becomes a thing.”

Mikkelsen and his non-Method acting will appear opposite Jude Law in the upcoming Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which is out this Friday, April 15.