Top 282 Quotes & Sayings by Benedict Cumberbatch
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an English actor Benedict Cumberbatch.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
We all want to escape our circumstances, don't we? Especially if you are an actor.
I realised quite early on that, although I wasn't trying to make a career speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals.
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.
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.
Any privacy in public is a hard thing to negotiate.
'Frankenstein' was all about the idea that, through electricity and the destruction of night, man creating light and darkness, we took on god-like powers and then abused them like gods, and we are only men. That's a story about man making a man in his own image. The inversion of natural order.
I haven't done period dramas back-to-back, or really anything back-to-back. You get asked to do what you're most recently famed for, so I'm careful of not repeating myself.
I'm not loyal to one genre. I want to mix it up.
I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.
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 love doing impersonations of people.
Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.
One of the best things about being an actor is that it's a meritocracy.
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.
It's difficult because nothing's preordained by plan and you can't control it. That's one of those joys and thrills and nerve-racking realities of being an actor. A lot has to do with luck, no matter what your talent or contribution can be.
I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.
It'd be really nice to wake up looking like, I don't know, Jake Gyllenhaal and think, 'Let's try this on for a day and see how it feels.'
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.
Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.
I had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor.
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.
To get a horse to hit a mark without a rider, to get it to stand up, to get it to rear, to get it to pick up a bucket and bring it over is amazing. It's hard work and very rewarding but can be dangerous.
I'm a Prince of Wales Trust ambassador, so I'm all about giving youth an education, a voice and a chance to not take the wrong road.
Maybe it's because I was an only child, but I've always wanted kids.
I have an appetite for the normal in my life, as well as the abnormal.
Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame.
The world of 'Sherlock Holmes' and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.
Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.
It does get strange when you realize people will hang around for hours to get a glimpse of you doing scenes outside.
My mum and dad had worked incredibly hard to afford me an education.
Lines are very difficult to learn.
There's no shame in stealing - any actor who says he doesn't is lying. You steal from everything.
I was brought up in a world of privilege.
I'm quite sensitive to people noticing me. There are times when I'm relaxed, then others when it does make me self-conscious.
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.
'Benedict' means 'blessed.' My parents liked the sound of the name and felt slightly blessed because they'd been trying for a child for a very long time.
Someone will always hate what I say. There's always going to be somebody spitting blood about my wooden-faced, toffee-named, crappy acting.
I was thrilled with how the first series of 'Sherlock' was received. It was such great fun to film, which makes it so rewarding when something you enjoy is so well received.
Every job is incredibly different, and I love it because you're picking up skill sets and experiences. It's the university of life.
New York City is crazy and beautiful and really close to my heart, and I've always had dear friends here - family, actually, I would say.
We're living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.
I was happy as an only child, but I've always wanted to be part of a bigger family.
Fame is a weird one. You need to distance yourself from it. People see a value in you that you don't see yourself.
If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people's expectations, then you can go mad.
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.
Having your adolescence at an all-male boarding school is just crap.
I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.
I've been quite a late developer on the clothes front, but I've suddenly realised it is one of life's joys.
If people ask, 'Are you Sherlock Holmes?', it's horribly naff, but I say, 'I'm not, I just look a bit like him' - which is how I feel. There are bad attributes of his that I really don't share!
The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.
Talking about class terrifies me. There is no way of winning.
Do I like being thought of as attractive? I don't know anyone on Earth who doesn't, but I do find it funny.
When you see a good horseman, you're unable to tell where the instruction is coming from. It's like telepathy.
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.
Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world.
Live a life less ordinary.
Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.
I want to be able to play trailer-bound fatties in a Judd Apatow comedy.
I'm not confident in social situations; just going up to someone in a bar and saying 'Hi' is going to be even more difficult because they won't know the real me. They will just know me as a fictional person I play on the screen.
I have actual acting scars.
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