Last fall, I talked to Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen, 46, about his romantic role in the 18th-century romance “A Royal Affair,” (opening today) the Danish entry for Best Foreign Film. Despite his high profile in Scandinavia — and a standout role as the Bond villain Le Chiffre in “Casino Royale” — Mikkelsen’s career has reached a new high this year. He won best actor honors at Cannes for “The Hunt” (out this summer) and he has the title role in “Hannibal,” which premiered last night.

While in “A Royal Affair,” Mikkelsen plays a doomed hero; he’s equally adept at playing villains. Enter Hannibal Lecter, the TV series. The NBC show is set in contemporary America. It takes place before the FBI arrests Lecter for his serial crimes. “That was a nice shift of gear for me,” said Mikkelsen of being cast in an American TV series. “Like wow, why not stick with something for a long time and see how it goes?”

Certainly Anthony Hopkins, who won a Best Actor for playing Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs,” throws a big shadow over the character. “You can’t avoid that,” agreed Mikkelsen. “He made it iconic and for a good reason. He’s absolutely outstanding in that character. We cannot move away totally from the fact that he is what he is, if not a little decadent then at least a man full of taste. But this takes place before he’s captured. Before anyone knows what he is.”

Mikkelsen offered a thumbnail of the plot, which is a prequel. “Lector is hired to help Will Graham [Dancy], who is a genius FBI profiler. But unfortunately Will suffers from too much empathy. It means he cannot deal with the cases. He’s putting himself in the shoes of the killers and he cannot handle that situation. So, the FBI hires me to help him deal with his job.”

Big mistake, right? “Right,” Mikkelsen continued, “I’m a psychiatrist. And all of a sudden I find myself in this candy store where I love being in the middle of every investigation that comes in. It means I can do pretty much what I want. I can manipulate the cases that Will’s running. I can get away with anything.”

Does this Lecter commit murders or just solve cases? “There’s a lot of solving cases and I do eat stuff occasionally,” Mikkelsen said. “A man’s gotta eat.”

For the full article go to Yahoo! Movies.

I wrote the following text for the Program of the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, 2013: I fell in love with ZD30 at first sight in a way that was as unequivocal and driven as Oscar-winning director Kathryn Bigelow. In her ninth theatrical feature, Bigelow reunites with “The Hurt Locker” screenwriter Mark Boal to create an uncompromising edge-of-your seat drama about the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden. And, in this most male of genres, a hybrid of espionage thriller and military action-adventure, the driving force is a pretty, petite CIA Agent. Maya (Jessica Chastain) acts tough not because she has a chip on her shoulder, or Daddy issues, but because she’s the chief crusader on a mission to eradicate Osama. It’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it. And, as Maya enters one torture chamber after the next, violently extracting the intel that leads to the discovery of bin Laden’s Pakistani hiding place, she may employ another man’s muscle to beat out a confession, but she understands that she is the power behind the fist. She’s culpable. Zero Dark Thirty explores the theme of retaining humanity while doing inhuman things to prevent future mass casualties. Engrossing, complicated and urgent, ZD30 makes no apologies and takes no prisoners – except the captive audience.

There’s a purity to the English actress Rachel Weisz, as she glides from playing a doctor in the popcorn thriller “The Bourne Legacy” to a love-besotted wife in the intellectual romance “The Deep Blue Sea.” In the latter film, she plays Hester Collyer, a postwar English aristocrat who risks everything for an affair with the charming but vapid pilot Freddie Page (“Thor’s” Tom Hiddleston). Weisz delivers an Oscar-worthy performance that merits a second look. Adapted from the Terence Rattigan play and directed by Terence Davies, “The Deep Blue Sea” is one of the best films of 2012 that you probably haven’t seen: It grossed $1.1 million domestically, while “The Bourne Legacy” hauled in $275 million worldwide.

One difference between the two movies: In the big-budget “Bourne” Weisz is the chief damsel in distress; in “TDBS” she’s the lead, and her character’s story drives the plot. The posh Hester has married an older man for love and social position and then gets blown sideways when she meets a man in uniform who unleashes her libido. There’s a thematic parallel to “Anna Karenina,” another historical fiction about a women who exits a stifling marriage through infidelity and suffers the consequences.

Weisz, who married Daniel Craig last year, was sitting over breakfast in a boho East Village cafe with me as she reflected on Hester’s parallels with Keira Knightley’s Karenina. In both movies, the husband isn’t demonized to justify the wife’s action. In “TDBS,” Sir William Collyer (Simon Russell Beale) clearly wants the best for Hester despite her infidelity. “Yes,” agreed Weisz, “he’s a nice guy. He’s a sweetheart. When I read it, I’d imagined a really evil, horrible, nasty husband.” Continue Reading

This year’s Toronto International Film Festival was rife with strong and varied women’s roles. Here are just a few that will pop and will be buzzed about in the Oscar race and beyond.

Marion Cotillard, “Rust and Bone”: This is a movie about transformation. A woman who works at Marineland in France has a horrible accident with an orca. As a result, she loses her legs below the knees and hits the bottom she was heading for when she was physically whole but emotionally lost. The remainder of the movie shows her slow progress on a journey that doesn’t require legs: the journey to spiritual wellness. A scene in which she finally returns to Marineland, perched on steel prosthetics, and, well, dances with the whale is magical without being sentimental. The camera loves Cotillard, but her physical beauty does not make her lazy. She acts quietly, subtly, a musician who knows her range. In this role, she defies the audience to like her as she casts off the armature of her looks and dives deep. It doesn’t hurt that this is the type of role — the “My Left Foot” affect — that ensures Oscar nominations if not outright wins. Cotillard will be among the five final nominees for best actress.

Laura Linney, “Hyde Park on Hudson”: This is the performance I feel I have to rally behind because of its subtle beauty and deeply felt realization. As Margaret Suckley, a fifth cousin turned secret lover to President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray), Linney plays a faded daisy. She shows every wrinkle in a face that would have been plainly pretty but has passed its marital sell-by date. She wears dresses that have seen wear in a limited wardrobe, hats that are unflattering, home-styled hair. Linney knows what she’s doing, and she doesn’t give this woman any more power than she would have had. She is like an Edith Wharton character, a Lily Bart; and as she enters the world of FDR, the president of the United States, she feels the weight of being a poor relation in the court of the Sun King. She is outmaneuvered at every point, and yet her love, her sensitivity, her sense of a spinster’s rebirth at an unexpected opportunity that takes her out of the musty cedar closet of her life and puts her in the center of the president’s household — all are real. While there is general acclaim for Bill Murray’s wily, wise FDR, there has been an underlying critique of Linney’s character and characterization. Hers is the more difficult role, and modern women may not have the patience for this passive spinster. However, her pain and relative powerlessness are real verging on tragic, and Linney draws her finely and with honor.

Mary Elizabeth Winstead, “Smashed”: I have written about Winstead’s performance as a young married kindergarten teacher who reaches that post-college tipping point when she realizes that she’s not just hard-partying but an alcoholic. That she reaches this awareness ahead of her equally “fun loving” husband (well played by Aaron Paul) makes her climbing the first wrung of her 12 steps all the more difficult. The tall, brunette all-American beauty, the star of “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World,” imbues her teacher with an extraordinary ordinariness, quick to smile and slow to judge. She is our best friend, our next-door neighbor, the woman we laugh with at the supermarket checkout stand about the latest cover of the National Enquirer — and yet her pain is as deep as that of the denizens of “Leaving Las Vegas.”

Keira Knightley, “Anna Karenina”: Knightley dons the hats, veils, and upholstery silks of one of literature’s major heroines, a character played in the past by Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh. Working with her “Atonement” and “Pride and Prejudice” director, Joe Wright, and a Tom Stoppard adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy novel, Knightley is part of a production that breathes fresh air into the tragedy of a virtuous wife and mother who falls into a spiral of passion with dashing Count Vronsky (Aaron Taylor-Johnson). Knightley wears the costumes and jewels — they do not wear her. The actress brings humanity, a warmth and intimacy, that make this historical character relatable to lonely wives who play with the fire of passion outside their marriages and burn with the consequences in any era. She gives Anna a contemporary urgency, and following on her overlooked turn in “A Dangerous Method,” she has become a top contender for the 2013 best-actress Oscar.

Jennifer Lawrence, “Silver Linings Playbook”: in the year’s strongest one-two punch, Oscar-nominee Lawrence proves that her “Hunger Games” box office muscle as Katniss Everdeen is not her only trick. In the latest movie from “The Fighter” director David O. Russell, Lawrence plays Tiffany, the mystery woman whom Bradley Cooper’s bipolar Pat Solitano befriends when he returns home after a stint at a mental institution. They meet cute and ultimately enter a dancing competition together. Sexy, crazy, and dancing? And uplift? How can Lawrence not compete? I would still love to see an Oscar nom for Lawrence’s “Hunger Games” performance, but this appealing role will surely land Lawrence a second best-actress nomination following “Winter’s Bone” and possibly a win.

More to love: Nina Hoss, “Barbara”; Greta Gerwig, “Frances Ha”; Emmanuelle Riva, “Amour”; Ana Moreira, “Tabu”; Macarena Garcia, “Blancanieves”; and Emayatzy Corinealdi, “Middle of Nowhere.”

Last Saturday, just after the Venice Film Festival crowned “The Master” with two major awards, I shuffled toward the Park Hyatt Toronto suite where Amy Adams leaned against the door frame, singing and laughing with her reps who were seated in the hallway. She looked nothing like the prim, pregnant Peggy Dodd, whom she plays onscreen. In the movie, Peggy and her cult-leader husband, Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman), attempt to redeem Joaquin Phoenix’s postwar lost soul, Freddie Quell — without losing their own souls in the process. In person, the petite star is cheery and barefoot – her super-high heels wait like lap dogs at the foot of her chair, where she joins me after finishing another chorus of “Callate la boca.”

Amy Adams: I was singing “Callate la boca” — I was teaching my daughter to sing it. We say it to the dog: “Callate la boca.”

Thelma Adams: It means “Shut your mouth,” right? Around my house we say “STFU,” but my kids are 13 and 16, not 2, like your daughter Aviana. So, after a while you just revert to how you were before you had kids. You can’t filter forever. Now, they understand how crazy their mother is.

AA: Oh, gosh, when does it happen? Because I know it’s on the way. When do they realize that you’re human? And not only human but, like me, a little left of center?

TA: It takes a while. It doesn’t happen until they are like 11 or 12. It’s the moment when they know that you can really embarrass them just by being yourself with no effort at all. Then you become a liability to a tween and a teen.

AA: Because now, I don’t care. I think that I am getting more and more like that. Now I am just a liability to myself because I’ve lost that ability to feel embarrassed anymore or feel shame over myself as much. You know people say, “You’re so smiley,” and I say that’s actually who I am. I tend to be someone who smiles a lot.

TA: Me, too.

AA: When I’m pissed, I smile.

TA: Now that’s scary!

AA: I was in New York on the subway and I was talking to this woman, and she was like, “You can tell you’re a tourist,” and I said, “Actually I’m not. I’ve been here all summer.”

TA: I know that you are smiley and charming and spunky, and you can play that, like when you play Amelia Earhart in “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.” But you are also a person, and it would be a shame to imprison all the emotions that you’re capable of in this tower of jolly.

AA: I am a person. I have bad days. I have really bad days.

TA: How do you access that dark side?

AA: What’s really great is that occasionally I get to do it as part of my work and have a creative outlet and somewhere to put that energy, or that angst, or the frustration, and have it be accepted as a part of an artistic self.

TA: Because your character in “The Master,” Peggy Dodd, is steely.

AA: Yeah. [She drops her voice to a whisper.] I like Peggy.

TA: I’m a little scared of Peggy, but I like your performance and respect her. Doesn’t she run the show to a certain extent?

AA: I think she’s very smart and she’s very aware of her role, and she’s more than happy to let somebody else steer the ship. The minute she sees it going off course, she’s going to take the wheel.

TA: So she’s the co-pilot?

AA: She’s definitely the co-pilot.

TA: And she’s sober, which her husband and his protégé are not. And she’s not as egomaniacal as the characters played by Hoffman and Phoenix.

AA: She’s a woman.

TA: So she can’t afford to be that egomaniacal?

AA: Women never can. Don’t you find? But mostly I’m a human being. It’s funny that you mentioned Amelia Earhart earlier, because that was the first time that I can remember playing a character that was confident. Afterwards, I said to my agent, I loved playing a confident character — let’s look for more. I really want to play confident women. And then I did “The Muppets,” and I remember thinking, this is really hard after playing characters that I feel are confident and fully realized. So that’s something that I was definitely looking for.

TA: How did you research Peggy?

AA: I had read a book a long time ago that I had picked up at a garage sale. I didn’t go to college, so I always felt something about not being an intellectual. It always got under my skin, and you know what someone finally said? “Who told you that being an intellectual is any better than being yourself?” I think it was a group of intellectuals, come to think of it! So I came to terms that I wasn’t a real intellectual but I loved learning. So I started picking up books, and I read a book called “The Feminine Mystique.”

TA: By Betty Friedan?

AA: Yep. When I was researching this character, I thought about what post-World War II meant to women. I thought about how the role of women had changed so much during the war and as the men came back we were sort of minimized.

TA: Like “Rosie the Riveter.”

AA: Yeah. It went from Rosie the Riveter to housecleaning is glamorous! Stay at home! Look how wonderful we are for making a beautiful home. Then there were those articles like “Don’t press your husband about his day on the job.” I mean, that stuff existed. I went back to “The Feminine Mystique” because I thought there was something wonderful relating to Peggy’s everywoman. And yet, she is different than any woman that I’ve ever met because of the era in which she existed. So I was informed more by the era, where I did my research.

TA: What’s the kernel of “The Feminine Mystique”?

AA: It really was the idea that women had power but understanding that it was behind the scenes. Peggy actually saw that as a very powerful place as opposed to feeling out of control. She ended up understanding where her power was. Granted, Peggy didn’t read “The Feminine Mystique.”

TA: Not likely, since it wasn’t written until 1963. I have two final questions: You’ve shot Lois Lane for the new Superman project, “Man of Steel,” opposite Henry Cavill. Lane is another confident female character. She can be seen as an extension of “The Front Page,” and Rosalind Russell’s big-shouldered women.

AA: Absolutely. It was fun. It was intimidating because it was played before by Margot Kidder, whom I love. One of my favorite movies growing up was “Superman” — and “Superman 2.” I was kind of a nerd; I loved them so much. It was important to create a character that was new because I thought she was perfect. It’s hard to step into a role where you thought someone had already achieved what could be achieved. But coming from theater, you’re always stepping into a role that’s been done before, so you’re always excited about it.

TA: What was your twist that you added to the role?

AA: It’s a totally different realization of the Superman lore, so I felt free in that way because I wasn’t trying to emulate any sort of banter that had been established by Christopher Reeve and Kidder. I was given a lot of permission to create a new character.

TA: By now you’ve heard the Venice Film Festival awarded “The Master” the Silver Lion for best directing for P.T. Anderson while Hoffman and Phoenix shared best-acting honors?

AA: I did.

TA: Can you give me a reaction?

AA: Wonderful! I’m sorry I missed the festival. I was onstage. I would have loved to be a part of that. I could not be happier for these two deserving men — and Paul as well. Three deserving men! Phil and Joaquin: After all this talk about female power, they frickin’ kill it in this film. They are unbelievable. Hats off! I can’t wait for people to see them in “The Master.”

When I exit Adams’ hotel suite, her director from “The Fighter,” David O. Russell (in Toronto with “Silver Linings Playbook”), has dropped by spontaneously to say hello between interviews. Down the hall, I pass Adams’ current director, Paul Thomas Anderson. He looks exhausted, eyes watery, graying hair disheveled, like a high school chemistry teacher after a long Friday. He’s clearly talked out but rallies when he sees Russell walking toward him. I get on the elevator a step ahead of the two auteurs, Anderson and Russell, then stand between them and realize what a gift, and act of will, Adams’ gregarious, happy-go-lucky personality is.