Benedict Cumberbatch The Biography - Justin Lewis

« What had marked him out early, though, was a refusal to chase populist parts for their own sake. He had always opted for the route of quality work, and had never committed to long runs of a television series. This enabled him to avoid being typecast in one role. »

« By being occasional, Sherlock always feels like special television. ‘I just want to bring people in a little bit to the idea of sitting down on a Sunday three consecutive weeks,’ Cumberbatch told America’s National Public Radio in 2012, ‘and having that water-cooler moment, that really was a sort of national sensation in the UK. It was an extraordinary cultural moment.’ »

« ‘He’s a handsome, remote genius,’ offered Sherlock co-creator Steven Moffat. ‘He’s impersonating a glacier but actually he’s a volcano – or actually that’s what I imagine his frantic and amorous female following are thinking.’ »

« A restless toddler, Benedict showed little sign of controlling his energy during his first years in education. »

« I probably had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or something on the border of it. I was always performing, doing silly voices. »

« His whisky beaten, cigarette stained voice aptly captured the personality of the philandering private eye. »

« The second hald of his gap year found him in Darjeeling, West Bengal, India, where he taught English to Buddhist monks for an organisation appropriately called GAP. He was able to live with the monks, and witness all their daily rituals, including working and praying. ‘They taught me about the duplicity of human nature, but also the humanity of it, and the ridiculous sense of humour you need to live a full spiritual life.’ »

« He wasn’t starry-eyed. »

« ‘Sherlock Holmes explained,’ said the Doctor Who writer. ‘Superman never told you how he flew, he just did. The Doctor never says a word about how the Tardis can be bigger on the inside, it just was. But Sherlock can’t wait to tell you how the trick is done – and I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to find out.’ »

« He has a really strong and assured way with language, and he’s quick and able to play quick thinkers as a result, people who are mercurial. »

« Cumberbatch had a reputation for working hard, and despite his determination to keep himself in trim (plenty of swimming, yoga and honey), sometimes this led to lapses in his health. »

« He has revealed that he could not learn these speeches ‘parrot fashion’. Instead, he explained : ‘In rehearsals, repetition, ‘actioning’ the script, a Stanislavski-based method of understanding the why, what and how of the part by applying transitive verbs to each line, association with that action, the cue line and any blocking all act as triggers to remember the line.’ Although he acknowledged that ‘a patient assistant director or girlfriend’ was helpful too. »

« If he wasn’t being cast as someone posh, it was as someone clever or creative, scientists, mathematicians, artists. »

« ‘There’s something of the Alan Rickman about him,’ said the Guardian. »

« I want to have my Daniel Craig moment ! »

Benedict Cumberbatch The Biography – Justin Lewis