Mads Mikkelsen Talks About His "Humiliating" Audition For 2005's FANTASTIC FOUR
In case you didn’t know, back in 2005, Mads Mikkelsen revealed he walked out of an audition for Fantastic Four. He auditioned for the role of Dr. Reed Richards a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic and in a recent interview with Vulture, he shared the experience he had in that audition in detail, and it involved the actor pretending he had “80-foot-arms”. While the actor says that the audition was humiliating, it does make for an amusing story.
Now, in a more recent interview, Mikkelsen shared more details about the audition, which involved the actor being asked to pretend he had “80-foot arms.” All in all, Mikkelsen calls the audition “kind of humiliating,” but hey, it still makes for a pretty funny story. Mikkelsen says:
“Some of the stuff was interesting, and other things were just like — this is where I felt you can completely lose your confidence as an actor. Standing in an office with a person who looks down at his paper, and you pretend you have long arms and say one line…I know a lot of casting is just first impressions — is there anything there that reminds the producer and the director of the character they’re looking for? But I find it rude to ask people to come into a room and say one line while pretending you have 80-foot arms like the rubber man. ‘Grab that cup of coffee over there’ — it’s like, Are you crazy? There’s not even a scene here. It was kind of humiliating.”
This led him to walk out of the audition. When previously talking about that part of the story, the actor said:
“We all show up and it’s a little office room with a desk and some books and they want you to do a scene where you have two lines – maybe not even two lines – maybe just ‘Bleurgh!’ or ‘Get back!’ And you’re hiding behind a palm tree that’s not there. It’s like, ‘Guys, couldn’t you have picked a different kind of scene to this? This is fucking mad.’ You feel like an idiot…I think I walked out…I think I actually said, ‘I can’t do it. It’s not about you, I’m sorry, this is wrong.'”
Regardless of him walking out and not getting the gig, Mikkelsen has done extremely well with his career. You know, he’s probably better off not getting that role. And he eventually did end up staring in a Marvel movie in Doctor Strange!