Lars Mikkelsen: The Life Story Behind Denmark's Quiet Star

Two brothers from Copenhagen became two of the most famous Danish actors in the world, and they did it in opposite ways. Mads Mikkelsen, the younger brother, became famous young, for his face, for his dancing, for playing villains in Casino Royale and Hannibal. Lars Mikkelsen, the elder by a year, became famous late, for his stillness, for playing men who say very little and mean everything they say. Lars studied biology first. He worked as a street performer. He did not go to drama school until he was nearly thirty. He did not become famous outside Denmark until he was fifty. And then, in the space of a decade, he played a mayoral candidate in The Killing, a blackmailer in Sherlock, a Russian president in House of Cards, and a blue-skinned Grand Admiral in Star Wars. This story starts at the end, with the blue admiral, and works backwards, because the end explains the beginning better than the beginning explains the end.

Thrawn Walks Into Ahsoka

In 2023 Lars Mikkelsen walked onto the screen in Ahsoka, the Disney+ Star Wars series, as Grand Admiral Thrawn, and Star Wars fans around the world recognised him at once — not from his face, which was painted blue, but from his voice. He had already played Thrawn, in voice only, in the animated series Star Wars Rebels, from 2016 to 2018, and the voice was the same: calm, precise, cold, a man who never raises his voice because he never needs to. Thrawn is a military genius, a Chiss alien with red eyes and blue skin, who plans his battles like a chess player and who has been missing, in the story, for years. When he returns in Ahsoka, the whole galaxy has to reckon with him, and Mikkelsen plays him as a man who has been waiting, patiently, for the right moment.

The casting was unusual, because Mikkelsen was not a famous face in America. He was a Danish actor, in his late fifties, known to viewers of Danish crime drama and to fans of Sherlock and House of Cards. Disney chose him because of the voice, because the animated Thrawn had his voice, and because a live-action Thrawn with a different voice would have been wrong. Mikkelsen brought the same stillness to the live-action role that he had brought to the voice: he stands, he looks, he speaks quietly, and the room listens. He was fifty-nine when Ahsoka was released, and he had been acting for nearly thirty years. The biggest role of his career came at the age when most actors are winding down.

Thrawn is not a villain who shouts. He is a villain who thinks, and Mikkelsen plays the thinking. That is the thread that runs through his whole career, from the Danish stage to the Star Wars galaxy: a man who thinks before he speaks, and who, when he does speak, says exactly what he means.

Copenhagen, Biology, and a Brother Named Mads

Lars Mikkelsen was born on 6 May 1964 in Copenhagen, Denmark, a year before his younger brother Mads, who was born in 1965. Their father worked as a bank employee and their mother as a nurse, and the family home was ordinary and unshowy. Neither parent was in the film industry. The boys grew up in the Copenhagen area, and as children they were more interested in sport and in the outdoors than in acting. Lars has said that theatre came to him late, and that as a boy he did not dream of a stage career.

He went to the University of Copenhagen to study biology, a practical, scientific choice, and he stayed with it long enough to know it was not what he wanted. He left the degree behind, and he spent time travelling and working outside Denmark, including time as a street performer and mime artist, performing in public places for whoever stopped to watch. Street performance is a hard school: there is no stage, no lighting, no audience that has paid to be there, only a crowd that can walk away. An actor who learns on the street learns to hold attention with nothing but his body and his presence, and Mikkelsen learned that lesson before he ever set foot in a drama school.

Mads, meanwhile, had taken a different path: he trained as a dancer, then as an actor, and he became famous in Denmark in the late 1990s, in films like Pusher, and then internationally, in Casino Royale in 2006. Lars watched his younger brother become a star, and he took his time. He did not go to drama school until he was in his late twenties, and he graduated from the Aarhus Theatre School in 1995, at thirty-one. He was a late starter, and the lateness shaped everything that followed.

Mime, Street Theatre, and Aarhus

The Aarhus Theatre School, where Mikkelsen trained, is one of Denmark’s leading drama schools, and he arrived there with something most of his classmates did not have: a decade of adult life behind him. He had studied biology, he had travelled, he had performed on the street, and he knew what the world looked like outside a theatre. That experience gave his acting a weight that younger actors often lack. He was not playing at being an adult. He was one.

After graduating in 1995 he worked in Danish theatre, including at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, playing classical roles and learning the discipline of the stage. Theatre in Denmark is a serious business, with a long tradition, and Mikkelsen spent his thirties building a reputation there, in plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov and Strindberg, and in new Danish work. He was a respected stage actor before he was a television actor, and the stage training is visible in everything he has done since: the voice, the posture, the way he holds a pause, the way he listens.

He also worked in Danish film and television in the late 1990s and early 2000s, in small parts that taught him how a camera works, and how different a screen performance is from a stage one. On stage, you project to the back row. On screen, you whisper, and the camera hears you. Mikkelsen learned to whisper, and the whisper became his signature. The men he plays do not shout. They speak quietly, and the quiet makes them more powerful, not less.

The Killing: Troels Hartmann

The part that made him famous in Denmark came in 2007, when he was cast as Troels Hartmann in The Killing, known in Danish as Forbrydelsen, the crime series that became one of the most successful television exports in Danish history. Hartmann is a politician, a candidate for mayor of Copenhagen, a man whose campaign is derailed when he becomes a suspect in the murder of a young woman. Mikkelsen played him as a man who is ambitious and decent at the same time, a politician who wants to do good and who is willing to do bad things to get the chance to do it.

The series followed Detective Sarah Lund, played by Sofie Gråbøl, as she investigated the murder, and it was watched across Europe and remade in America. Hartmann was one of the central figures in the first series, and Mikkelsen’s performance was praised for its restraint: he did not play Hartmann as a villain or a hero, but as a man caught between the two, making choices that he could not take back. The part made him a star in Denmark, at forty-three, after more than a decade of theatre work.

The Killing was part of a wave of Danish crime drama — The Killing, Borgen, The Bridge — that put Danish television on the world map, and Mikkelsen was part of that wave from the beginning. He had waited a long time to be famous, and when the fame came, it came because of a part that asked him to do what he does best: stand still, speak quietly, and let the audience see the thinking behind the face.

Sherlock, Borgen, and House of Cards

The international work followed quickly. In 2013 he joined Borgen, the Danish political drama about a prime minister, Birgitte Nyborg, played by Sidse Babett Knudsen, in its third series, playing a character caught in the machinery of Danish politics. Borgen was already a hit across Europe, and Mikkelsen’s arrival in it confirmed his place at the centre of Danish television.

In 2014 he played Charles Augustus Magnussen in Sherlock, the BBC series starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr Watson. Magnussen is a newspaper magnate and a blackmailer, a man who owns the secrets of the most powerful people in Britain and who uses them to control them. He appeared in the episode “His Last Vow”, and he played Magnussen as a man who does not need to threaten anyone, because the threat is already in the room: he knows your secret, and you know he knows it. The performance was widely praised, and it introduced Mikkelsen to a British audience that had never seen him before. He was fifty, and he was suddenly famous in Britain.

In 2015 he joined House of Cards, the Netflix political drama starring Kevin Spacey as Frank Underwood, playing Viktor Petrov, the President of Russia, a recurring role across the third and fourth seasons. Petrov is a man who negotiates with Underwood as an equal, who lies with a straight face, and who understands power in the same way Underwood does. Mikkelsen played him in English, with a Russian accent, as a man who is calm on the surface and ruthless underneath. The role made him known in America, and it showed that he could play a world leader without ever raising his voice.

The Witcher and the Voice of Thrawn

Between House of Cards and Ahsoka, Mikkelsen took on two more roles that showed his range. In 2019 he played Stregobor in The Witcher, the Netflix fantasy series starring Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia. Stregobor is a mage, a scholar of magic who is obsessed with a prophecy about a girl born under a black sun, and Mikkelsen played him as a man whose learning has curdled into cruelty, a scholar who has forgotten that the people he studies are real. The part was a fantasy role, a long way from the Danish crime dramas, and it showed that Mikkelsen could work in a genre that depends on costumes and effects, and still bring the same stillness to it.

The voice work came first, in Star Wars Rebels, where he voiced Grand Admiral Thrawn from 2016 to 2018, across the third and fourth seasons of the animated series. Voice acting is a different skill from screen acting: there is no face, no body, only the voice, and Mikkelsen’s voice — low, calm, precise — was perfect for Thrawn, a military genius who plans his battles like a chess player. The animated Thrawn became a favourite of Star Wars fans, and when Disney decided to bring Thrawn into live action, in Ahsoka in 2023, there was only one choice for the part: the man who had already given him a voice.

Ahsoka, starring Rosario Dawson as the former Jedi, brought Thrawn back to the galaxy after years in exile, and Mikkelsen played him in live action, in blue makeup and red contact lenses, with the same calm that had defined the voice. He was fifty-nine, and he was playing the biggest villain in Star Wars, in a series watched by millions of people around the world. The late starter had arrived, at last, at the centre of the biggest franchise in the world.

The Stillness: What Makes Him Different

There is a quality to Mikkelsen’s acting that is hard to describe without sounding vague, so it is worth being specific. He is still. He does not move much. He does not gesture. He stands, he looks, and he speaks quietly, and the audience watches him because the stillness is more interesting than movement. That stillness comes from the mime training, from the street performance, from the years on the Danish stage, and from the simple fact that he started late and learned to trust the quiet.

He also listens. Watch him in a scene with another actor and notice how much of the performance happens while the other person is talking: the small reactions, the flicker of attention, the decision not to speak. That kind of listening is what separates a good television actor from a great one, and it is the reason directors keep hiring him for roles that depend on power: a man who listens is a man who is thinking, and a man who is thinking is a man who is dangerous.

Family, Theatre, and Life in Denmark

Mikkelsen is married to the Danish actress Anette Støvelbæk, and they have two sons together. He lives in Denmark, and he has spoken about the importance of staying home, of working in Danish theatre, and of raising his children in the country where he grew up. He has worked in English-language productions for a decade now, in Britain and in America, but he has always come home, to the Royal Theatre, to Danish television, to the life he built before the fame.

His brother Mads is one of the most famous actors in the world, and Lars has never tried to compete with him. They are different actors, with different careers, and Lars has built his own, slowly, in his own time. He started late, he became famous late, and he is still working, still getting better, at sixty-one, with the biggest franchise in the world now part of his story, and with the Danish stage still waiting for him whenever he comes home. The biology student who became a street performer, who became a stage actor, who became a television star, who became a Star Wars villain, did not follow a plan. He followed his curiosity, and the curiosity led him somewhere worth going, and it is still leading him now.

The Danish Stage: The Royal Theatre Years

Before the television fame, there was the stage, and the stage deserves its own space in this story. After graduating from the Aarhus Theatre School in 1995, Mikkelsen worked in Danish theatre for more than a decade, including at the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, the country’s national stage, where he played classical roles in plays by Shakespeare, Chekhov and Strindberg, and in new Danish work written for the company. Theatre in Denmark is not a stepping stone to television. It is a career in itself, with a long tradition and an audience that knows the plays by heart, and Mikkelsen spent his thirties building a reputation there, as an actor who could hold a stage without raising his voice.

The stage training is visible in everything he has done since. The voice, trained to reach the back row without shouting, is the voice that plays Thrawn. The posture, learned from playing kings and generals in classical plays, is the posture that plays Petrov and Magnussen. The listening, learned from years of working with other actors in a room, is the listening that makes his television scenes work. He has never left the theatre behind. He returns to it between television jobs, and the return keeps the work honest, because a stage audience cannot be fooled the way a camera can be.

Devils, The Witcher, and the Genre Years

The years between House of Cards and Ahsoka were genre years, and they showed a different side of Mikkelsen. In 2020 he played Daniel Duval in Devils, the Sky Atlantic financial thriller starring Patrick Dempsey, as a French banker caught in the world of high finance and political intrigue. The part was a long way from Danish crime drama, and it showed that Mikkelsen could work in an international series, in English, as a European businessman whose calm hides a ruthlessness.

In 2019 he had already played Stregobor in The Witcher, the Netflix fantasy series, as a mage whose learning has curdled into cruelty, and the two parts together — a banker and a mage — show the range that the stillness can cover. A banker who is calm because he is rich. A mage who is calm because he is old. A president who is calm because he is powerful. An admiral who is calm because he is certain. Four different kinds of calm, played by the same actor, and the audience can tell them apart without being told. That is the skill, and it is a skill that only comes from years on a stage, learning how to be still in four different ways.

The Voice: Why Disney Chose Him

The Thrawn casting deserves a closer look, because it was decided by a voice. When Disney decided to bring Thrawn into live action, the fans already knew what he sounded like: Lars Mikkelsen had voiced him in Star Wars Rebels, from 2016 to 2018, and the voice had become part of the character. A different actor, with a different voice, would have been wrong, and Disney knew it. They chose the man who had already given Thrawn his voice, and they painted his face blue and let him play the part he had been playing for years.

Voice acting is a different skill from screen acting. There is no face, no body, only the voice, and Mikkelsen’s voice — low, calm, precise, with a Danish clarity that makes every word land — was perfect for a military genius who plans his battles like a chess player. He had already proved, in Rebels, that he could hold an audience with his voice alone, and Ahsoka proved that the voice worked in live action too. The fans recognised him at once, not from his face, which was painted blue, but from the voice, which was the same. That is a rare kind of fame: famous for a voice, in a franchise watched by millions, at fifty-nine, after a career spent being quiet. It is also a fitting kind of fame for an actor whose whole career has been built on the voice: the low, calm, precise voice that can hold a room without raising itself, and that can make a single sentence sound like a decision that has already been made.

My Take:

The first thing I think about Lars Mikkelsen is the lateness. He did not go to drama school until he was nearly thirty. He did not become famous in Denmark until he was forty-three. He did not become famous in Britain until he was fifty. He did not become famous in America until he was fifty-one. He did not play the biggest villain in Star Wars until he was fifty-nine. That is a career built on patience, and patience is a rare thing in an industry that rewards the young and discards the old. Mikkelsen’s career is proof that starting late is not the same as starting badly, and that the years spent doing other things — studying biology, performing on the street, travelling — are not wasted years. They are the years that make the acting better.

The biology matters more than it looks. A man who studied biology understands how systems work, how a body works, how a small change in one place can change everything somewhere else. Mikkelsen’s acting has that same quality: he understands that a small change — a look, a pause, a decision not to speak — can change a whole scene. He does not need to do a lot. He needs to do the right thing, at the right moment, and the biology student in him knows how to find it.

The street performance matters too. A street performer has no stage, no lighting, no audience that has paid to be there. He has only his body and his presence, and a crowd that can walk away. Mikkelsen learned, on the street, how to hold attention with nothing, and that lesson is visible in every performance since. Thrawn holds a room with nothing but his voice. Magnussen holds a room with nothing but a secret. Hartmann holds a room with nothing but a look. The street taught him that attention is earned, not given, and he has been earning it ever since.

The comparison with Mads is inevitable, and it is worth making honestly. Mads is the more famous brother, the more glamorous one, the one who played a Bond villain and Hannibal Lecter and who dances in a way that makes the internet stop. Lars is the quieter brother, the one who plays politicians and presidents and admirals, the one who does less and means more. There is no competition between them, because they are doing different jobs. Mads plays men who are dangerous because they are charming. Lars plays men who are dangerous because they are still. Both are frightening, in different ways, and both are brilliant, in different ways.

Thrawn is the role that will define him for a global audience, and it is a strange role to be defined by: a blue-skinned alien, in makeup, in a franchise that most Danish actors never touch. But Thrawn is also the perfect Lars Mikkelsen role, because Thrawn is a man who thinks before he speaks, who plans his battles like a chess player, who never raises his voice because he never needs to. Mikkelsen has been playing that man for twenty years, in Danish, in English, on stage and on screen, and Star Wars finally gave him the costume that matched the performance. The voice came first, in the animated series, and the body followed, in Ahsoka, and the two together are one of the best casting decisions Disney has made.

Magnussen, in Sherlock, is the performance I would show to anyone who wants to understand Mikkelsen in the shortest possible time. He appears in one episode, “His Last Vow”, and he dominates it without ever raising his voice. He is a blackmailer, a man who owns the secrets of the most powerful people in Britain, and he plays him as a man who does not need to threaten anyone, because the threat is already in the room. He licks his lips. He smiles. He says very little, and the audience understands everything. It is a performance of pure control, and it is the reason the British audience remembered him.

Hartmann, in The Killing, is the performance that made him famous in Denmark, and it deserves to be talked about as one of the great performances in Danish television. Hartmann is a politician whose campaign is derailed by a murder investigation, and Mikkelsen plays him as a man who is ambitious and decent at the same time, who wants to do good and is willing to do bad things to get the chance. The part asks for a man caught between two truths, and Mikkelsen plays the catch, not the choice. He does not decide whether Hartmann is good or bad. He lets the audience decide, and the audience cannot decide, because the performance will not let them.

Petrov, in House of Cards, is the performance that made him known in America, and it is underrated. He plays the President of Russia as a man who negotiates with Frank Underwood as an equal, who lies with a straight face, and who understands power in the same way Underwood does. The role asks for a Russian accent, in English, and for a stillness that matches Kevin Spacey’s, and Mikkelsen delivers both. He does not try to out-act Spacey. He stands next to him, quietly, and the scene works because the two men are equals.

There are weaknesses to name. The first is that Mikkelsen is not well known outside the audiences who watch Danish crime drama, Sherlock, House of Cards and Star Wars. He is a star in Denmark, a respected name in Britain and America, and almost unknown to the wider public. That is partly a choice — he stayed in Denmark, he works in Danish theatre — and partly a matter of the industry, which does not know what to do with a Danish actor in his sixties who does not want to move to Los Angeles. The result is that a great actor is known to a small audience, and the small audience is the price of the choice he made.

The second weakness is that the stillness, for all its power, can become a limitation. Mikkelsen plays quiet, controlled men so well that directors rarely ask him to play anything else. He has played a politician, a blackmailer, a president, an admiral, a mage. All of them are still, all of them are controlled, all of them are powerful. He has rarely played a man who loses control, who shouts, who falls apart, and the audience does not know whether he can. I think he can, and I would like to see it, because the stillness would mean more if we saw what happens when it breaks.

And a final thought, about the voice. Mikkelsen’s voice is low, calm, and precise, and it is the instrument that made Thrawn work, in animation and in live action, and that made Magnussen and Petrov work, in London and in Washington. A voice like that is not learned in drama school. It is learned on a stage, in a room full of people, and on a street, in front of strangers who can walk away, and in a biology lecture, listening to a teacher explain how the world works. The voice is the career, in a real sense, and it is still there, at sixty-one, as calm and as precise as it was at thirty-one, when he graduated from Aarhus and walked onto a stage for the first time.

For a new viewer, I would suggest starting with Sherlock, because Magnussen is the performance that shows the stillness in the shortest possible time, and then watching The Killing, because Hartmann is the performance that shows the stillness over a whole series, and then watching Ahsoka, because Thrawn is the performance that shows the stillness on the biggest stage in the world. Those three performances, watched in that order, show the range in the shortest possible time, and they show why directors keep calling him back.

The final judgement is this: Lars Mikkelsen is one of the best actors Denmark has produced, not because he is the most famous, but because he is the most patient. He started late, he became famous late, and he kept getting better, year after year, until the biggest franchise in the world came to him, at fifty-nine, and asked him to play its greatest villain. He said yes, he painted his face blue, and he played the villain the way he has played every man in his career: quietly, still, and with a voice that makes the room listen. That is a career worth knowing, and a life worth telling in full. The biology student who became a street performer, who became a stage actor, who became a television star, who became a Star Wars admiral, did not follow a plan. He followed his curiosity, and the curiosity led him somewhere worth going, and it is still leading him, at sixty-one, to work that is better than the work that came before it, in Denmark and in galaxies far away, on stage and on screen, in Danish and in English, with the same stillness that has defined him from the start, and with the same voice that made a whole galaxy listen.

One more thought, about the stage. Mikkelsen spent more than a decade in Danish theatre before television made him famous, and the theatre is still part of his life. That matters, because a stage actor learns things a screen actor never learns: how to hold a room without a camera, how to listen to a live audience, how to do the same scene eight times a week and make it feel new. The stillness that defines his screen work was learned on a stage, in front of a live audience, where stillness is the hardest thing to hold, because the audience can see you breathe. He learned to breathe quietly, and the camera, when it finally found him, rewarded him for it.

And a final thought, about starting late. The world tells young people that if they have not succeeded by thirty, they have failed. Mikkelsen’s career is proof that the world is wrong. He went to drama school at twenty-eight. He graduated at thirty-one. He became famous in Denmark at forty-three. He became famous in Britain at fifty. He played the biggest villain in Star Wars at fifty-nine. Every step came late, and every step came because he was ready for it. The years were not wasted. They were the preparation, and the preparation is the reason the performances are so good. Anyone who is starting late, in any field, should look at Lars Mikkelsen and take heart: the late start is not a disadvantage. It is a different kind of advantage, and it lasts longer.

Stregobor, in The Witcher, is the performance that shows the stillness in a genre where stillness is rare. Fantasy is a loud genre: swords, magic, monsters, battles. Stregobor is quiet, a scholar whose learning has curdled into cruelty, and Mikkelsen plays him as a man who has forgotten that the people he studies are real. The part could have been a caricature, a wizard with a beard and a robe, and Mikkelsen refused to play it that way. He played a man, and the man was frightening because he was reasonable, because he had a reason for everything he did, and the reason was wrong. That is the same skill he used for Magnussen and for Petrov and for Thrawn: the villain who is reasonable, and therefore terrifying.

The brother question deserves one last word. Lars and Mads are different actors, and they have built different careers, but they share something: a Danish directness, a refusal to show off, a trust in the quiet. Mads plays men who are dangerous because they are charming. Lars plays men who are dangerous because they are still. The two brothers, together, have shown the world what Danish acting can be, and they have done it without ever competing with each other. That is a rare thing, in a family and in a profession, and it is worth naming: two brothers, two careers, both brilliant, neither diminished by the other. If there is a lesson in their story, it is that there is more than one way to be a great actor, and that the quiet way, the late way, the patient way, is as valid as the loud way, and sometimes it lasts longer, and sometimes it reaches further, into galaxies the loud way never visits, and into the hearts of audiences who prefer a whisper to a shout, and a stillness to a storm, and a voice that never needs to rise to be heard.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is Lars Mikkelsen related to Mads Mikkelsen?

They are brothers. Lars was born on 6 May 1964 and Mads was born in 1965, a year younger. Both grew up in Copenhagen, and both became internationally known actors, Lars for The Killing, Sherlock, House of Cards and Star Wars, Mads for Casino Royale and Hannibal.

What did Lars Mikkelsen study before acting?

He studied biology at the University of Copenhagen, then spent time as a street performer and mime artist, before going to drama school. He graduated from the Aarhus Theatre School in 1995, at thirty-one, and worked in Danish theatre before becoming famous on television.

Who did Lars Mikkelsen play in The Killing?

He played Troels Hartmann, a candidate for mayor of Copenhagen whose campaign is derailed when he becomes a suspect in a murder investigation, in the first series of The Killing in 2007, known in Danish as Forbrydelsen.

Who was Charles Augustus Magnussen in Sherlock?

Magnussen was the newspaper magnate and blackmailer played by Mikkelsen in the Sherlock episode “His Last Vow” in 2014, opposite Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes. He owns the secrets of the most powerful people in Britain and uses them to control them.

Did Lars Mikkelsen voice Thrawn before playing him in live action?

Yes. He voiced Grand Admiral Thrawn in the animated series Star Wars Rebels from 2016 to 2018, and then played Thrawn in live action in Ahsoka in 2023, in blue makeup, with the same calm voice that fans recognised from the animation.

Is Lars Mikkelsen married?

He is married to the Danish actress Anette Støvelbæk, and they have two sons together. He lives in Denmark and continues to work in Danish theatre alongside his international television work.