Mads Mikkelsen: 5 Awesome Performances & 5 That Sucked

1. Lucas - The Hunt (2012)

You may think that it would be impossible to watch anything more tense or unnerving than Mikkelsen's performance as Lecter, but his harrowing, enraging performance as Lucas in The Hunt is infinitely more taxing.

Lucas is a normal man whose world is entirely ripped apart by a devastating accusation - that he sexually abused one of the children at the school he worked at - and his descent into ostracisation and victimisation is hopeless and gnawing and awful. It helps, of course, that he looks sort of evil, but the emotion that he displays and the sympathy he demands is almost painfully unbearable. It's like watching your own finger-nails being slowly pulled from their beds.

He stumbles through the accusations and the violent backlash (which becomes unthinkable at times) with a sort of quiet burning rage and lack of understanding, as people he thought he could count on turn against him. It is, truly, a remarkable tale of the dangers of false accusations and the psychology of the enraged mob.

And the best (or worst) of it is that there's no firm resolution, even as he's cleared, because the accusations stick with some. That's the true horror of it.

And now on to the less than great moments from his career...