Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes

When are you ever settled enough to have kids?

I don't want to miss things.

Do awards change careers? Well, I haven't heard of many stories where that's the case. It's a fun excuse to meet colleagues and celebrate people who've done well that year in certain people's eyes, and it's nothing more than that.

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.

Anyone who works in the NHS has superpowers. It's a miracle, it is magic.

[Scott Derrickson] is terrific, really sharp on the details, and he's not afraid to go to dark places.

I'm really not Sherlock Holmes. I look a little bit like him and sound like him.

Do I like being thought of as attractive? I don’t know anyone on Earth who doesn’t, but I do find it funny. I look in a mirror and I see all the faults I’ve lived with for 35 years and yet people go kind of nuts for certain things about me. It’s not me being humble. I just think it’s weird.

[Doctor Strange] is still quite cocky by the end of the film. No, I'd say the major curve for him is that he learns that it's not all about him, that there's a greater good. But what he thinks he was doing as a neurosurgeon, that was good because it benefitted people's health was really just a furtherment of his attempts to control death and control his own fate and other people's, but that's still driven by the ego.

Maybe it's just getting older, but I don't want to miss things.

I want to do it all. I want to climb mountains, go through jungles, fight wars in space, get the girl, shoot the bad-guy full of lead, have all the zippy one liners, bulge muscles out of a singlet, drip sweat and blood on screen, all of that.

I'm interested in art for all. I don't want it to be only the sons and daughters of Tory MPs who get to see my plays.

I think it's fair to say that, yeah, I'm playing Doctor Strange, I get there.

I have actual acting scars.

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.

One of the fears of having too much work is not having time to observe. And once you get recognised, there is nowhere for you to look any more. You can't sit on a night bus and watch it all happen.

I play enough other mad people, as well and some sane people, to vary the palette of what's scrabbling around in my head and soul to bring to the floor, as a storyteller.

Only when Stephen Strange has his accident and everything that he's ever had in his life falls apart that he becomes pretty monstrous. It's the self-loathing rage of a wounded animal and he doesn't have a coping mechanism at all. It ties in with the discipline and the magic of this world.

Our daily lives are so mundane, we get taken over by what is immediately in front of us and we don't see beyond that.

I never really got obsessed about one thing for long. I was a bit of a butterfly and a magpie.

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.

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

[Sherlock Holmes] has to understand the world. That's very much John's [Watson] influence on him. But like a lot of the friendships and relationships in that world, it's born out of necessity. It makes him better. There's a pragmatism to it. It's not whimsical or sentimental. It's born out of necessity.

Writing in French is one of my ambitions. I'd like to be able to dream one day in French. Italian and French are the two languages that I'd like to know.

I'd shift disciplines, whether it was musical instruments or sports or whatever, and it's the same with that.

I really cannot get over the generosity of our Tibetian teacher. He said, "Don't punish yourself. You're going to be a student at a university in the north of England. You need to have your experiences and have your fun, and not judge yourself. Don't live in guilt and regret."

Looking for happiness is a sure way to sadness, I think. You have to take each moment as it comes.

Sometimes being away, on location, I feel like I'm away for much of my own life. I want to be better at staying connected.

Conan Doyle is amazing in the way he has Watson describe Sherlock’s posture, mood swings, his hand gestures, and so forth in the novels.

Sherlock being the most prevalent, and they've been really good fun.

There's a huge amount of footage of Julian [ Assange] online, but he's usually in presentation or defending mode, talking about his cause, or the revelations which Wikileaks have brought about. There's none of Assange relaxing or in private mode. There's none of the personality I tried to give him behind closed doors [in The Fifth Estate ].

That's something I have to work on: to separate what really matters, to conserve energy by not worrying about what other people think. When I walk through that door, it's about home. If I didn't do that, I'd become consumed by one thing only and damage the people who love me. And it would damage the work.

I'm quite surprised by how many people grew up with this character [Doctor Strange ].

When you see a good horseman, you're unable to tell where the instruction is coming from. It's like telepathy.

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

I feel like I'm away for much of my own life.

My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan's 'The Browning Version,' where my job was to make school-masters' wives weep with recognition.

I would love to just have the work do the talking. We're in positions where people ask us questions; they want to know about more than just the work. And it can go into areas where I've completely shot my mouth off, whether it's too much about my private life or being too opinionated about things in the world. I think the better thing to do - I've learned this from people far wiser than me - is to do very good, quiet work behind closed doors.

Being on set is quite difficult, because it's so big and you've got to try and relax, which isn't easy when you know you're in a massive film. I was terrified for quite a long time.

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.

If you can't jump on board when the ride's going past that's it, it usually goes by, so the hugest compliment they paid me was to come back to me. It motivated me to try to fulfill their faith.

I had to imagine myself into certain aspects of [Julian Assange] character for our version of events. That involved extrapolating based on clues in his biography, his public persona, photographs, and other accounts of him by people who encountered him during that extraordinary period from 2007 to 2010 that we charted in the film [The Fifth Estate]. So, it involved a lot of research but, sadly, no contact with the man himself.

The first time we did cavalry charge I was so breathless with excitement I nearly fell off the horse. I actually saw stars in front of my eyes and thought I was going to faint. The second time I had a bit more control but was still giddy with excitement. And the third time I was an emotional wreck. I had to really try hard not to cry.

I want to be able to play trailer-bound fatties in a Judd Apatow comedy.

I had to kiss it [ playing Hamlet] goodbye because Marvel have to plot things for the next three, four years.

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.

I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.

When I was young I became kind of a party animal. I had a massive crash. My health suffered. I was just overdoing it. That person could not be further from the one who emerged from that earlier experience. I regressed massively.