My first agent dissuaded me from calling myself 'Cumberbatch.' I had six months of not very productive time with her, so I changed agents. The new one said, 'Why aren't you using your family name? It's a real attention-grabber.' I worried, 'How much is it going to cost to put my name in lights?' But then I decided that's not my problem.

Even though Doctor Strange is an established character, when you're doing an origin story there's a lot of room for manoeuvre.

Being someone who is of our sensual reality, Stephen Strange has a lifestyle, he has a sexuality, he's materialistic.

For brain surgeons it's particularly difficult to deal with failure. It was fascinating to learn about that whole world.

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.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

The biggest lesson Stephen Strange learns in this film is it's not all about him.