Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes

I remember very clearly someone saying, 'Don't shake hands with the cactus,' and I thought, 'Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?' Shaking hands is a friendly gesture.

Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.

I'm a high-functioning sociopath, do your research.

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

Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I'm also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.

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

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

You come into this world as you leave it, on your own. It's made me want to live a life slightly less ordinary.

I keep myself amused and others confused

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.

I always seem to be cast as slightly wan, ethereal, troubled intellectuals or physically ambivalent bad lovers. But I'm here to tell you I'm quite the opposite in real life. In fact I'm a f**king fantastic lover.

If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people's expectations, then you can go mad.

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.

I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.

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.

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.

Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world.

People always want to knock you when you're up.

I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.

I suppose my bodily proportions are quite flattering. I'm ripped, doing something I wouldn't normally do with my body, or having done to it, involving Watson.

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.

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 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.

One of the best things about being an actor is that it's a meritocracy.

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'm not very geeky. I'm quite homespun. I would say I'm more modern rustic than gadget-orientated. I like woollen things and log fires and whiskey

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.

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.

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 love the idea of playing something stupid or romantic. I'm not the smartest man in the room. I listen, and I learn, and I observe, but I'm always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That's great fun, even though it's as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.

The number of people my age, younger now, a whole generation younger, who are fiercely bright, over-educated, under-employed and who are politicised and purposeless really upsets me. It's soul-destroying.

We have a lot more unlikely heroes now. It’s not just the guy with guns—it’s the guy with brains.

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.

[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.

I try to work hard. I'm really proud of what I get to do as a living. I still pinch myself. But I also know it's a craft, and I can get better at it and learn every time I do it. So I try to work hard no matter what the task is.

Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and '90s to make sure the school bills were paid.

I thought, well, why am I giving up on my primary dream to work doubly hard, to do something as an alternative to what it really still want to?

If you can't fail, you can never get better.

That's something I have to work on: to separate what really matters, to conserve energy by not worrying about what other people think.

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.

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.

Thus, a vision of the whole gradually grew for me that was nourished by the various experiences and realizations I had encountered along my theological path. I rejoiced to be able to say something of my own, something new and yet completely within the faith of the Church. The feeling of aquiring a theological vision that was ever more clearly my own was the most wonderful experience of those years.

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.

There are things that are a given, that you've already established, and obviously, visually, certain iconic things that can't be completely removed, like a certain hat or a certain coat in my case.

People's hands fascinate me. It's tempting to look at a businessman's left hand and see if there's an indentation from a missing wedding ring. Or maybe there's a tan line and the skin is pressed down where's he's worked a ring off his finger.

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

I'm quite sensitive to people noticing me. There are times when I'm relaxed, then others when it does make me self-conscious.

We all want to escape our circumstances, don't we? Especially if you are an actor.

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.

[ 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.