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Even in cerebral roles that are seemingly intelligent and nothing else, I think it’s so important to wrap your characterization in a physical form as well.

Benedict Cumberbatch

It’s an interesting arc. You start with a character [Doctor Strange] who’s likeable and charming but very arrogant and distant. He’s funny but you can see there are massive holes in his life. It’s a very painful transition and all that he becomes is tested so quickly and violently.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Character Doctors Interesting
I’ve said for quite a long time I’d like him to have a different haircut. I quite like my hair being short. You know, we’ve been away two years, let’s f*** around with his outfit, let’s f*** around with his haircut, let’s do something different.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Hair Short Two Years
If I’d had fame early on, I’d have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Able Abuse Men
I think now with fundamentalists, people who treat belief with a total lack of humor or empathy for any other viewpoint than their own – they, to me, are the enemy. And those people are born out of desperate extremes.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Empathy People Thinking
There’s no shame in stealing – any actor who says he doesn’t is lying. You steal from everything.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Actors Lying Shame
It’s difficult because nothing’s preordained by plan and you can’t control it. That’s one of those joys and thrills and nerve-racking realities of being an actor. A lot has to do with luck, no matter what your talent or contribution can be.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Joy Luck Reality
I want to be able to play trailer-bound fatties in a Judd Apatow comedy.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Able Play Want
I wanted to take the audience on a journey where that transition was funny and awkward. It’s the same cynicism that [Strange] has.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Awkward Journey Transition
Laughing and crying are really similar – what happens to your body. It’s a very similar process in your diaphragm. Like a musician, you have to do your scales once in a while and warm up your voice.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Cry Laughing Musician
I love theatre, and you learn too much as an actor and enjoy too much of it not to want to go back a lot.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Actors Theatre Want
I realised quite early on that, although I wasn’t trying to make a career speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Careers Realised Trying
There’s a heroic amount of effort that goes into making him [Doctor Strange] a superhero by the end of the film.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Doctors Effort Superhero
We should have a conversation when we hang up.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Conversation Hang People
I got live tweeted once by someone who was opposite my home in some rented accommodation. He was actually describing on twitter what I was doing. ‘I took a shirt off, I went to the window, I put a shirt back on… ‘ And I’ve got blinds in my flat!
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Home Opposite Window
I’ve realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Children Persons Reality
Lines are very difficult to learn.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Difficult Learn Lines
It’s one of the things that attracted me to the role [Doctor Strange] is the fact that it’s a really widely origin story, I mean this is part of it, but of course there’s the whole chapter before where he’s the neurosurgeon who has the accident. It’s fantastic.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Doctor Mean Role
I have pitfalls. I have emotional responses to things that are really not about me. They’re about other people.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Emotional People Response
Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and ’90s to make sure the school bills were paid.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Farce School Theatre
You let things run in order to have some sanity and be able to do your work and not feel pre-judged.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Able Order Running
I’m very excited about all the offers and interest and support pouring in through crowd-funding, and about having a lovely gap coming up when I’ll finally be able to sit down with books and scripts and talk to my partners about how we take the company forward.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Book Lovely Support
Marvel always make it fresh so you can give it your personal twist.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Always Giving Personal Twists
I haven’t done period dramas back-to-back, or really anything back-to-back. You get asked to do what you’re most recently famed for, so I’m careful of not repeating myself.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Done Drama Periods
I love doing impersonations of people.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Impersonation Love People
Actor is an odd profession, and sometimes people get jealous, but I haven’t really experienced any of that. Everyone’s been really happy for me, which is really, really great.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Jealous People Sometime
I suppose my bodily proportions are quite flattering. I’m ripped, doing something I wouldn’t normally do with my body, or having done to it, involving Watson.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Body Done Proportion
[on BBC’s Sherlock] It’s a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It’s a form of mental and physical gymnastics.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Actor Challenges Gymnastics

Even in cerebral roles that are seemingly intelligent and nothing else, I think it’s so important to wrap your characterization in a physical form as well.

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Even in cerebral roles that are seemingly intelligent and nothing else, I think it’s so important to wrap your characterization in a physical form as well.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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