A Quote by Benedict Cumberbatch

Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and '90s to make sure the school bills were paid. — © Benedict Cumberbatch
Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and '90s to make sure the school bills were paid.
My first gig was a Corn Pops commercial. I did the first Vanilla Coke campaign. A Juicy Fruit commercial paid my bills for years.
I did theatre a lot when I was a kid. Then I went to acting school in New York. I did a lot of behind the scenes in college. I wanted to learn while I had the time. I studied theatre and film in different capacities.
I would ask my mum to feed my dolls and make sure they were tucked in when I went to school.
Like leggings, comedies created by women came into vogue in the late 1980s, exploded in the early '90s, went mainstream in the mid-'90s, and were shoved into the back of the closet around 1997.
It was quite a thespian - 'thespy' - sort of household. My mum had a dance school, and my dad now works in a theatre, so I spent a lot of time going to see dance as a young child - it was just a part of who we were.
My dad and mom did what a lot of parents did at the time. They sacrificed a lot of their life and used a lot of their disposable income to make sure their children were educated.
I am essentially someone who comes from the theatre. I love the theatre. Unfortunately, theatre doesn't pay the bills. Only in theatre abroad, I get a wage.
I went to theatre school for four years and just wanted to do theatre. I had no ambition to be on TV or to be on camera. I just wanted to go to New York or London and be on stage... I did a lot of theatre in Montreal, got involved in TV in Toronto and then moved to L.A. I hope that film and TV will take me back to theatre.
When we were at school my younger brother and I were very sporty, so we did a lot of stuff outside school, club activities. Summer holidays, though, my mum would take off a big chunk of time and my dad would take some time off and I have the fondest memories of the things we'd do as a family.
My grandmother spent a lot of time with us when we were growing up. She did the school runs and fed us when my mum was busy. To be with her was to really be at home.
My first commercial ever was a Dr. Pepper commercial. And then I did a Mountain Dew commercial. A lot of soft drinks.
My mum is a theatrical person. I saw a tape of a theatre project she did when I was a kid. I was really affected by the idea that my mum could turn herself into someone else for the purpose of telling a story.
I pretty much got into theatre to do community theatre and things, but then I went to Williamstown and found an agent. I then went to New York and did a lot of theatre there, so I started doing only theatre.
The '90s were a party, I mean definitely maybe not for the grunge movement, but people were partying harder in the '90s than they were in the '80s. The '90s was Ecstasy, the '80s was yuppies. There was that whole Ecstasy culture. People were having a pretty good time in the '90s.
The '90s were a time when not just the movie business, but every aspect of American life, became a lot more corporate. There's a line in Jonathan Franzen's essay "Perchance to Dream" about how "the rich lateral dramas of local manners have been replaced by a single vertical drama, that of commercial generality." I wanted to examine that great homogenizing force that came in during the '90s, since Hollywood seemed a place where it was particularly active.
Commercial record has never interested me. It's amazing I was in a band like The Police that had such phenomenal commercial success. Part of what made The Police what it was was that we didn't all come in with obvious mainstream musical tastes. We were a rock band and somehow we had to make rock music, but it was informed by a lot of things outside of the mainstream for sure.
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