Top 282 Quotes & Sayings by Benedict Cumberbatch - Page 3

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.

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.

I was the boy that turned a girlfriend into the most celebrated lesbian on television. I got so much stick for that.

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 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.

I'm excited to see where the Illuminati and whatever else might happen, how that works, and where it ends up.

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.

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 had a very sparse comic upbringing - not because I was being whipped into reading Chekhov and Dickens, but I read Asterix on holidays when I was a kid, and Tin Tin was featured, I remember, for a few years.

Actor is an odd profession, and sometimes people get jealous, but I haven't really experienced any of that. Everyone's been really happy for me, which is really, really great.

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.

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.

The awful lesson of history is that we too often ignore people, just because they're foreigners or different from us.

[ 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.

I've been reading the books. It's the origination, it's the primary source. You should always go back to the books.

I am shortsighted. I need glasses for watching movies or concerts. It's not a hipster affectation; I do have poor eyesight. This is how ridiculous my life is: I've had the test for contact lenses, but I haven't found a half-day where I can go to the optician.

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.

I'm still very sensitive and wary of people recognising me The only thing that really annoys me is people trying to surreptitiously take a photo on their phone without asking. I feel it's cowardly and a bit pathetic. Just ask me if you really want me to have a photograph with you.

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.

I understand from those who adore him, he [Julian Assange] has a great sense of humor which rarely gets an airing because he's dealing with such serious issues.

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

I don't live beyond my means. I enjoy luxury and I enjoy the privilege of it, when I can afford it, and I'm in the situation where it's been given to me, but I'm very conscious of what is wasteful.

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.

My dad read The Hobbit to me originally when I was young. So, it was the first imaginary landscape I ever had in my head from the written word. It gave me a passion for reading, thanks to my dad's performance of the book.

There was a moment of extraordinary humbleness and humility and pride, as well, with my father when he turned to me - and I think it was after I played Salieri in "Amadeus" at university. And he said, You're better than I ever was or ever could be, you should do this for profession. You'd have a good time.

I tell my wife all my secrets.

I've seen and swam and climbed and lived and driven and filmed. Should it all end tomorrow, I can definitely say there would be no regrets. I am very lucky, and I know it. I really have lived 5,000 times over.

I don't want to miss things.

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.

I’m very excited about all the offers and interest and support pouring in through crowd-funding, and about having a lovely gap coming up when I’ll finally be able to sit down with books and scripts and talk to my partners about how we take the company forward.

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.

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

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 am very flattered. I have also become a verb as in "I have cumberbatched the UK audience" apparently. Who knows, by the end of the year I might become a swear word too! It's crazy and fun and very flattering.

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

There are very specific demands, though, in television, and you notice the budget constrictions. It's the time constraint and a purse constraint more than anything else that you notice. But the ambition of the writing and, hopefully, the delivery of it gets better and better because we want to outdo ourselves to keep ahead of a very expectant and hungry public.

Marvel always make it fresh so you can give it your personal twist.

Mads [Mikkelsen] and I have a really epic brawl - a week shoot, lots of rehearsal - and he was just delightful. He's a dancer and a gymnast so he knows how to plant the moves. He was always saying, "Are you okay?" When you've got that level of mutual consideration you form a family very quickly.

What makes a good animated movie is being able to balance adult and knowing in-jokes and also just out and out funny things that make all people laugh. The idea that it's actually something that will appeal to a family, that's the trick.

I know he [Julian Assange] is a man of fierce determination, and now living under the strain of house arrest in the Ecuadorean embassy as a "political exile," as he calls himself.

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

I want to be better at staying connected.

[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 ate healthily, but there was no snacking, no drinking, no bread, no sugar, no smoking. Afterwards I had a pork belly roast.

I am also full of admiration for Chelsea Manning [formerly PFC Bradley Manning]. Regardless of which side of the argument you're on, he stood up for something he felt wasn't right. That was an extraordinarily brave thing to do, and I think he was unfairly punished for it. It's a really big deal what he did, and he did it for the betterment of all us, including the soldiers on the ground, as well as the civilians caught up in those conflicts.

I'd love to meet Julian [Assange], and time permitting, and his will permitting, I'm sure it will happen at some point. Even though he's been very critical of the film [The Fifth Estate], he's been very polite about me and my work, and I feel the same way about him.

I have pitfalls. I have emotional responses to things that are really not about me. They're about other people.

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

I'm aware of [Doctor Strange] place within the comic pantheon of it all, the Marvelverse, but I don't email saying, "When are we doing next film?" I'm excited to see.

I'm not an overnight success. I've been doing it for 12 years. It's been lovely and varied so far.

[on BBC's Sherlock] It's a rare challenge, both for the audience and an actor, to take part in something with this level of intelligence and wit. You have to really enjoy it. It's a form of mental and physical gymnastics.

I'm aware of the power of looks. I've wanted to play roles that have gone to much better-looking people and you just think 'Oh well, that's the pin up guy's an actor like my friend James Mcavoy, who's gorgeous on screen. I'm not that. But at least I don't have to worry about taking precious care of my face because it's my commodity. That's a great freedom. I'm not afraid of being heinous for the sake of a part

You let things run in order to have some sanity and be able to do your work and not feel pre-judged.

The story [in 12 Years a Slave] serves as a metaphor for the fear of having your family taken away, and for being abused in such a horrific way. I lost it a lot of times watching that film, particularly when seeing the grace of the man when he finally makes it back home aged, changed, forever brutalized, and yet he apologizes to his family for his long absence. That was such a profoundly moving moment capturing the triumph of dignity over the disgraceful behavior of those involved in the slave trade.

When auditioning, I try to imagine that I'm the only person that they [directors] are seeing that day because it can be overwhelming, in the same sense that it could be overwhelming if you try to fulfil everyone's expectations rather than the people closest to you in the creative process, be it your director, or fellow actors and the writers. So, that's kind of it - I try to trick myself into believing that no one has ever gone there before.

It's one of the things that attracted me to the role [Doctor Strange] is the fact that it's a really widely origin story, I mean this is part of it, but of course there's the whole chapter before where he's the neurosurgeon who has the accident. It's fantastic.

As an actor, to be part of that story's [Marvel univerce ] terrific. I've enjoyed it so much as a fan and now I'm getting to have a go myself.

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.

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.

I've never been front and centre as an iconic American character [like in Doctor Strange]. Day to day, you know you're painting on a very big canvas.