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We have a lot more unlikely heroes now. It’s not just the guy with guns—it’s the guy with brains.

Benedict Cumberbatch

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
When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don’t really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it’s not fair that others aren’t doing exactly what you’re doing. I do have that.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Drama Jobs School
The number of people my age, younger now, a whole generation younger, who are fiercely bright, over-educated, under-employed and who are politicised and purposeless really upsets me. It’s soul-destroying.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Numbers People Soul
All the backstories are there but not talked about.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

About People Stories Talk
I am shortsighted. I need glasses for watching movies or concerts. It’s not a hipster affectation; I do have poor eyesight. This is how ridiculous my life is: I’ve had the test for contact lenses, but I haven’t found a half-day where I can go to the optician.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Hipster Poor Ridiculous
I try to work hard. I’m really proud of what I get to do as a living. I still pinch myself. But I also know it’s a craft, and I can get better at it and learn every time I do it. So I try to work hard no matter what the task is.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Better Get Hard Trying Work
I had a very sparse comic upbringing – not because I was being whipped into reading Chekhov and Dickens, but I read Asterix on holidays when I was a kid, and Tin Tin was featured, I remember, for a few years.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Holiday Kids Reading
I’m sort of focused on my long-term goal of carving out a career that’s for life, rather than being a flash in the pan.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Careers Goal Long
Sherlock [Holmes] is on the side of the angels, but don’t think he’s one of them. He uses similar means, but it seems to be for a better purpose, one would hope.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Angel Mean Thinking
It still makes me giggle that I’m paid to act.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Giggle Paid Stills
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
The awful lesson of history is that we too often ignore people, just because they’re foreigners or different from us.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Different Ignore Lesson People
I was brought up in a world of privilege.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Brought Privilege World
You can perfect genius because genius is not perfection. On his level and his practice and his methodology, it’s almost inhuman. So, that’s been a fantastic arc to play, and boy does it go somewhere in this series.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Boys Play Practice
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
Anyone who works in the NHS has superpowers. It’s a miracle, it is magic.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Magic Miracle Nhs
Someone will always hate what I say. There’s always going to be somebody spitting blood about my wooden-faced, toffee-named, crappy acting.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Acting Blood Hate
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 was very keen to work on the script with Scott Derrickson and [C. Robert] Cargill, and working out the important story beats, changing lines, upping the comedy, changing the pace, all of that was great fun.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Fun Important Out Work
I’ll always do ‘Sherlock’ – it’s something I’m not going to give up on.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Always Giving Help Support Up
Fame is a weird one. You need to distance yourself from it. People see a value in you that you don’t see yourself.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Distance Needs People
Even the cerebral characters I play seem to have physical quirks. They’re all “physically inhabited,” for lack off a better expression. For instance, Sherlock Holmes has very particular physical gestures which are drawn out in such detail.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Character Expression Play
I struggle to learn by rote. I’ve had meltdowns on set. Which is embarrassing and shameful.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Embarrassing Meltdowns Struggle
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
Live a life less ordinary.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Brain Less Ordinary
Cumberbatch – it sounds like a fart in a bath, doesn’t it? What a fluffy old name. I can never say it on a Monday morning. When I became an actor, Mum wasn’t keen on me keeping it.
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Monday Morning Names

We have a lot more unlikely heroes now. It’s not just the guy with guns—it’s the guy with brains.

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We have a lot more unlikely heroes now. It’s not just the guy with guns—it’s the guy with brains.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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