Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes

The more charming person is the person who admits the other person is more charming.

[Sherlock Holmes] has moved from being someone who was sociopathic, work-obsessed and slightly amoral, into being someone who has a certain degree of a private life, which is very, very private, with The Woman, or Irene Adler.

There are very specific demands, though, in television, and you notice the budget constrictions. It's the time constraint and a purse constraint more than anything else that you notice. But the ambition of the writing and, hopefully, the delivery of it gets better and better because we want to outdo ourselves to keep ahead of a very expectant and hungry public.

I actually do mind having a photo taken because it's one o'clock in the morning and I'm off my face.

I'm very proud of the work I do, but I genuinely can't involve myself with an audience as early as somebody who's not part of the film can. So there's that side of theater that appeals to me, where you give something and the response to what you've created is a communion between you and the dark that contains however many people. It's thrilling not having a reflection other than through the people you're communicating with. But people ask, "What do you prefer?" and I don't have a preference. I love them both. I really do.

I tell my wife all my secrets.

I'm not an overnight success. I've been doing it for 12 years. It's been lovely and varied so far.

Scott Derrickson breathes humour into a character with a very strong identity in the '60s and '70s, that psychedelia era of Eastern mysticism meeting the West.

It will be obvious to anyone who sees it that he [Doctor Strange] earns that cloak. You think he's doing all right and then you realise that there's one massive lesson to learn.

I like to think that we’re revolving on this planet and revolving through the galaxy. I love having context that’s so much bigger than I can fathom. It’s fantastic to realise how insignificant you are.

I think what I loved in cinema - and what I mean by cinema is not just films, but proper, classical cinema - are the extraordinary moments that can occur on screen. At the same time, I do feel that cinema and theater feed each other. I feel like you can do close-up on stage and you can do something very bold and highly characterized - and, dare I say, theatrical - on camera. I think the cameras and the viewpoints shift depending on the intensity and integrity of your intention and focus on that.

Being in front of an audience makes me feel alive. Being with friends makes me feel alive. I’ve done some crazy stuff in my time and yet I can feel infinitely alive curled up on a sofa reading a book. So, what makes me feel alive? I guess it’s realizing I am part of the world around me.

[ Stephen Strange] is less strange than other characters I've played. He's lost the power to love, which doesn't make him a nasty person. I just think he's closed-off.

I keep myself amused and others confused

I had a real yearning to make use of the opportunities I had at school. When I heard about the gap year of teaching English at a Tibetan monastery, I knew I had to do something about it really quickly, otherwise it was going to get allocated.

Any irrational fears?no, i'm quite a rationalist. i'm not superstitious, i think life is too full of natural wonders and logical complexities to worry about illogical things.

[Role of Dr.Strange] gives me an excuse as an actor to be learning with my character, which is something you can do authentically - I'm not a martial arts expert, I'm certainly no sorcerer, so all these things, the movement of the body, the physicality, the changes he goes through mentally and physically, obviously we're not shooting in sequence, but it's a great part.

I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.

I have pitfalls. I have emotional responses to things that are really not about me. They're about other people.

I think with any characterization there's a point where you empathize, no matter how much of a deviance his or her actions may be from your understanding of humanity.

I'm not loyal to one genre. I want to mix it up.

I'm sad in a way that the character [Doctor Strange ] leaves [neurosurgery] behind. It's an amazing discipline.

It is a wonderful thing to get married young and become a father.

As an actor, you are aware of how a role can seep into your real life.

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.

I wanted to take the audience on a journey where that transition was funny and awkward. It's the same cynicism that [Strange] has.

It's great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I'm enjoying.

My dad read The Hobbit to me originally when I was young. So, it was the first imaginary landscape I ever had in my head from the written word. It gave me a passion for reading, thanks to my dad's performance of the book.

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.

I've gone up two suit sizes. The character I'm playing, he's strong, I can say that much. I've changed my physique a bit, so that requires eating like a foie gras goose, well beyond your appetite. Providing I don't feel too ill, I then work out two hours a day with a phenomenal trainer. It's the L.A. way.

Kevin Feige said to me: "I don't think we've ever put an actor through quite as much as this, physically and mentally." I'll wear that as a badge of honour. It was endless.

When you freefall for 7,000 feet it doesn't feel like you're falling: it feels like you're floating, a bit like scuba diving.

I've done a bit of live action before but the fight sequences, the wire work and the physical regime were taken to another level [ in Doctor Strange].

It still makes me giggle that I'm paid to act.

Doctor Strange is selfish but he's still saving lives.

Because reading is one of the joys of life, and once you begin, you can't stop, and you've got so many stories to look forward to.

I was always performing, doing silly voices. The teachers realized I could go one of two ways: be creative or destructive.

It's very easy to be cynical about any kind of interference in things that are beyond our skill set.

I'd love to do a noir. I think Steve McQueen is so cool. But a classic film is a classic film, and perhaps the fantasy of being those characters should be left alone. You're treading on very thin ice.

I am very flattered. I have also become a verb as in "I have cumberbatched the UK audience" apparently. Who knows, by the end of the year I might become a swear word too! It's crazy and fun and very flattering.

It was great. I got to hang out with him [Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins], and I kept a straight face for a bit and then I started giggling because I know Martin, I don't know Bilbo. For Martin to be sitting there playing Bilbo is amazing. He's going to be amazing, he's going to be fantastic in this film.

I was very nervous about doing the Entertainment Weekly cover, because I thought, "Okay, this is the first taste, this is the first visual moment." By then I obviously knew a lot of the more iconic moments in his comic history, but still it's me. It's not a drawing, it's not an artist; it's me and I'm kinda frightened, but it seemed to go down.

Maybe it's because I was an only child, but I've always wanted kids.

Metaphorically speaking, it's easy to bump into one another on the journey from A to B and not even notice. People should take time to notice, enjoy and help each other.

I can’t stop traffic on Fifth Avenue, not unless I walk in front of an oncoming cab.

The training gave me the building blocks to get through it. A production of that scale, in a theater that big, you are going to struggle to keep your voice at first-run perfectness. All that work I did - the pull-ups and pushups - helped keep my body fit. Hamlet, the show, is a cardiovascular workout of about three hours, never mind the mental, soul-crushing element of it.

It does get strange when you realize people will hang around for hours to get a glimpse of you doing scenes outside.

There's a huge raft of roles that actors in our culture perform, and you can see any one of about three Hamlets in a year. It's not something to be completely daunted by.