The actor Stellan Skarsgård has criticised the attempts of the US president to annex Greenland, calling him “a little man who got megalomania”.

Speaking at the European Film awards over the weekend, the actor – now frontrunner to win the supporting actor Oscar for his role in Sentimental Value – called the actions of Donald Trump “absurd”.

“It’s absurd, isn’t it?” he told Deadline. “It’s a little man who got megalomania, and he’s trying to take the world,” said Skarsgård, who invoked Trump’s recent overseeing of the removal from power of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

“He took Venezuela, suddenly, and that’s for Chevron. He’ll take Greenland for minerals. He’s a criminal,” he said.

Skarsgård hails from Sweden; Sentimental Value director Joachim Trier is Danish and Norwegian. Greenland is self-governed but Denmark runs its defence and foreign policy.

Writing on Truth Social, Trump called for the “complete and total purchase” of Greenland and threatened EU nations who deploy troops in opposition with financial tariffs.

Björk, the Icelandic singer and – like Skarsgård – a veteran of Lars von Trier films, has also criticised the US president, as well as Denmark.

“I wish all Greenlanders blessing in their fight for independence,” she wrote on social media. “Icelanders are extremely relieved that they managed to break from the Danish in 1944. We didn’t lose our language (my children would be speaking Danish now), and I burst with sympathy for Greenlanders.”

She added: “Colonialism has repeatedly given me horror chills up my back, and the chance that my fellow Greenlanders might go from one cruel coloniser to another is too brutal to even imagine.”

Skarsgård, who is still recovering from a stroke, plays an ailing film director in Joachim Trier’s film, and recently revealed that a plan was afoot to resurrect Meryl Streep’s character for a second Mamma Mia! sequel. “A lot of people are working on it,” he told People.