A 'Fragile' Le Chiffre In Casino Royale, Says Mads Mikkelsen
In an interview with the Daily Record, Mads Mikkelsen has spoken about how Le Chiffre in Casino Royale is a little bit different from previous Bond villains.
‘He’s not taking over the world,’ says Mikkelsen. ‘He’s not a mad scientist. He is something real that we can see every day. I will not name the countries, but we know them. He’s in it for the money. He’s laundering money for terrorist organisations and in many ways he doesn’t care what they do.’
‘So he’s a mirror of companies and certain countries today that benefit them all… bringing it into 2006 was the interesting part I think. Le Chiffre’s under pressure. He’s a fragile person. He’s not on top of the world. He’s actually getting desperate and because of that he’s getting more dangerous. That is a new take and I like that.’
Mikkelsen also talks about the distinguishing feature of Le Chiffre–the scar above his eye. ‘The weeping blood is a disease. It is rare, but it’s like high blood pressure in certain situations will make people start bleeding from their nose, and occasionally through their eyes, which is kind of scary.’
He explains that it worked especially well in Casino Royale‘s poker sequences between Bond and his character. ‘We liked the look of it because I was playing a lot of poker in this film and there is nothing more annoying than looking at a person that is unreadable because they only use one eye. It becomes blurry and unfocused and we really liked that detail.’
And what about the torture sequence? ‘It was specifically a tough situation for Daniel, sitting there for eight hours. So we just had to stay focused… when Daniel was done and they started filming me, he was still there giving 100 per cent, and thank God for that.’
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