Mads Mikkelsen Quotes

I've always worked a lot with silence in my films. It forces the audience to concentrate on what they're seeing, because silence is pure emotions. It has no logic; it goes straight to the heart.

Your internal dialogue has got to be different from what you say. And, you know, in film, hopefully that registers and speaks volumes. It's always the unspoken word and what's happening behind someone's eyes that makes it so rich.

There's always so much more that can be conveyed on screen visually in the expressions of people's faces, in their bodies, in their body language. And also with sound design, with music.

I discovered that silent film is almost an advantage. You just have to think of the feeling for it to show. No lines pollute it. It doesn't take much - a gaze, an eyelash flutter - for the emotion to be vivid.

It made me alive to the fact that the most important thing sometimes is what isn't said - to prepare for moments of revelation that can be read entirely on actors' faces without dialogue.

As much as movies are about the words that you're saying, they're also about what's not said, the silent moments.

Dialogue is not always the best way to show emotion, to show your thought process, or to reveal yourself, as a character.

The greatest acting really is spoken without words, or at least I like to think that.

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.

Silence has sometimes a remarkable power of showing itself as the disembodied soul of feeling wandering without its carcase, and it is then more impressive than speech.

Often it is important to listen to what people aren't saying.

There is this miraculous thing I heard Hugh Grant talking about - the thing about screen acting is that you can read people's thoughts. You are trying to register something inside and usually the eyes in cinema are where you will register that.

It's almost better most times to not talk in a scene. I think you can actually express a lot more without words.

I don't need dialogue to convey emotion or thoughts to my audience.

The best way to show an emotion is not through a character's words, but their smallest expressions - to take what an actor would visually do and try putting that down on the page for the reader to 'see.'

Breathing is always key in any character. When you have a character with no voice, that makes it even more important.

I understand why people went nuts for 'The Artist.' We use words so much, it's nice to be able to explore a different way of communication, to be able to express silently what someone - or something - is thinking or feeling.

I'm an instinctive actor. I just see the part and play it. I'm more interested in what isn't said - the silences.

The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.

In a Western, you talk more with your eyes and your actions than you do with big speeches. I love that.

Tone matters more than words.

It's hard to tell writers, especially in movies, that words are secondary. Behavior is important.

It's a good challenge as an actor to express feelings without saying too many words.

I think it's not about what you say; it's about what you don't say.

Some actors are better with words than me. I prefer to play it rather than say it - and keep people thinking.