OTHER ARTICLES 1. Production Information 2. “If you don’t get bruised playing Bond, you’re not doing it properly.” – Daniel Craig 3. “Vesper is not the classic Bond girl, wearing a bikini and firing guns.” – Eva Green 4. “He’s ice cold.” — Mads Mikkelsen 5. “I’m drunk with power.” — Judi Dench 6. “She has great sex. Then he’s gone!” — Caterina Murino 7. “It is a great story and a great thriller.” — Ivana Milicevic 8. “Life is made of obstacles and challenges.” — Sébastien Foucan 9. “A different Bond in every way.” – Martin Campbell 10. “CASINO ROYALE will be a classic Bond.” – Michael G. Wilson 11. “Because of Daniel’s more muscular physique, the evening suit is a new shape.” — Lindy Hemming 12. “Bond literally brings the house down ’round about him.” — Peter Lamont 13. “I spent eight hours a day in the water and two hours underwater.” — Chris Corbould 14. Locations for Casino Royale

“He’s ice cold.”
— Mads Mikkelsen

Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen was thrilled to take on one of cinema’s most despised (and prized) roles: the Bond villain. “I’m attracted to scripts where my character might have some secrets, so to be offered the role of Le Chiffre, ‘the Cipher,’ a man with no real name, was perfect. Many actors say that playing the villain is more interesting than playing the good guy because he always has a twist in his character. But I think if you are playing the bad guy, you try to show a good side to him sometimes, and if you are playing the good guy, you try to show a flaw in him, so it’s not one-dimensional for the audience. My favorite Bond villain was Christopher Walken in A View to a Kill. He’s got what it takes to be a good villain. There is something good and bad about him at the same time.”

Mikkelsen purposely chose not to read the Ian Fleming novel before production began on CASINO ROYALE, preferring instead to develop his character exclusively from the screenplay and his extensive discussions with director Martin Campbell. He notes that Le Chiffre isn’t the typical Bond-movie bad guy: Rather than a megalomaniacal madman looking to take over the world, Le Chiffre is an amoral criminal mastermind with a thirst for hard currency.

“He’s living in the contemporary world and trying to make as much money as possible, just like everybody else,” says Mikkelsen. “He’s smart and clever and doesn’t boast about his successes. He rarely gets his own hands dirty, but he will if he has to. When we meet him he’s rich and successful, but Bond is on his tail. And when the chips are down he doesn’t show his emotions. He’s ice cold.”

In order to recoup his massive stock-market losses, Le Chiffre organizes a poker game in Montenegro for international high rollers with a $10 million buy-in. The actors took poker lessons and rehearsed the games before filming began in order to keep the performances fresh as the hands were played and replayed over several days.

Producer Wilson, a self-described poker “addict,” supervised the rehearsals himself. “Most of us could already play poker and, as well as rehearsing the tournament, we played poker for fun,” says Mikkelsen. “In fact we often ended up playing in the corridors of [Prague’s] Barrandov Studios between scenes.”

Playing cards on camera for three weeks apparently only whet the actors’ appetite for the game. One night Mikkelsen and some of his fellow actors ventured out to a casino in Prague – where they promptly ran into Wilson.

Like most gamblers, Le Chiffre has a tell, an involuntary tic that reveals how he feels about his hand, explains Mikkelsen. “He has a scar on his eye, and the vein starts to pump when his heart rate increases, so he casually presses his finger against it to stop, but Bond notices. It has to be as subtle as possible, of course, or he wouldn’t win many poker games. But Le Chiffre manages to turn this flaw to his advantage.”