Benedict Cumberbatch is a British cultural icon. Born in 1976 to actor parents, his father read him Tolkein’s The Hobbit as a child, which opened his mind to imaginary worlds. His first stage part was at twelve, when he played Titania, queen of the fairies in a school production of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. He later trained as a classical actor, and performed in London’s West End. As he became more successful, Cumberbatch considered changing his name. But the actor is proud of his ancestry; he is even a distant relative of Richard III, the notorious English king!
LESS ORDINARY
In 2005, while filming in South Africa, Cumberbatch and two friends were held at gunpoint by a group of locals. Eventually, they were set free unharmed, but Cumberbatch found the experience life-changing. He later said of the incident: “It taught me that you come into this world as you leave it, on your own. It made me want to live a life less ordinary.”
THE ART OF SCIENCE
Cumberbatch certainly plays roles that are out of the ordinary: intellectual, enigmatic and eccentric heroes and antiheroes. One of his early parts was as the cosmologist Stephen Hawking. He later played Victor Frankenstein and his creature on alternate nights in a stage production of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In 2014, he took on the part of mathematician and logician Alan Turing in The Imitation Game.
SHERLOCK
There have been many reincarnations of Sherlock Holmes since Sir Arthur Conan Doyle first introduced the famous detective in 1887, but Cumberbatch helped turn him into a 21st century sex symbol: a brilliant sociopath, whose mind has the qualities of a sophisticated computer program. Sherlock has been broadcast in more than two hundred countries, including Taiwan, South Korea and Mexico. In China, an estimated ninety-eight million people watched the last season.
METHOD IN MADNESS
Cumberbatch has played many other intriguing parts. They include the controversial WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and a privileged and traumatised drug addict in Patrick Melrose, based on the book and life story of its author Edward St. Aubyn. In the recent film Brexit: The Uncivil War he played Dominic Cummings, the head of the official campaign for Britain to leave the European Union.
MINDFUL OF MEDIA
Unlike the characters he plays, Cumberbatch tries hard to keep life simple. Before university he volunteered as an English teacher at a Tibetan monastery in India, and took an interest in Buddhist philosophy. Today, he practises meditation and mindfulness, and follows a vegan diet. Perhaps most impressive of all, though, is his relationship with social media. He is not on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram.
