poshbatch cumberdick

Martin Tyrell, who first spotted his the actor's star quality as a 13-year-old at the £34,590-a-year school, said Cumberbatch was held back by his education, since it limited the range of potential roles he could expect to play.

Quizzed about whether he was looking forward to his son Christopher growing up and watching his films, Benedict replied, ‘He’s very small…’

‘Is being a dad your proudest achievement?’, Alison probed.

He replied: ‘It’s probably Sophie’s. I’m expecting a second child now… I’m still proving myself as a father.’

BC: (talking about the [Frankenstein] Creature’s origin) It’s basically being a man child, it’s being a man infant. And then, psychologically, Danny and Nick Dear, who’s adapted the Mary Shelley novel, into a brilliant 2 ½ hour play version of it, he, they both have autistic sons. So we went to two extraordinary schools and met some high spectrum autistic kids. And it was very, very humbling and amazing and very upsetting, but very, very extraordinary as well, and inspiring. And especially the people looking after them, and these amazing life forces, but just formed with…*sigh* um, socially just things that are outside of everyday.  You know, there are certain barriers that aren’t there because of the arrested development that… there was a 17 year old that had the mental age of, I think, an 18 month old. I mean, it was…

GN: Wow

BC: It’s…it’s…it’s really really extraordinary and very upsetting. And uh, it was important for them to realize that the Creature in their story was not their… the monster of old… the monster of the gothic horror stories.  He’s very much an innocent.  He’s very much someone who is carried through life, as someone who is so different, not only because of his appearance, but because of these behaviorial tics, which are very autistic, um, both in his understanding of the world, psychologically and emotionally, but also physically as well, how that manifests later in his body. And so that was the major part of the preparation.

"It adds - it never takes away," says the 40-year-old actor, who became a parent for the first time last year, with the birth of his son, Christopher. "Lots of people, especially women, get told, 'Oh you know, it's going to really affect your career', and it does, but for the better in most cases that I know.

"[I'm] castigated as a moaning, rich public school b**tard, complaining about only getting posh roles."

He added: "So domestic, and so dumb. It makes me think I want to go to America."

Cumberbatch has previously complained about being typecast because of his upbringing.

"Being a posh actor in England, you can't escape class-typing, from whatever side you look at it," he said last year.

From a Shortlist interview:

What do you make of the new US modern Sherlock Holmes adaptation, Elementary?

Jonny [Lee Miller] asked me if I was all right with him doing it. I said, “What are the similarities?” And he went, “Well it’s modern...” I went, “Oh.” Then he said, “Lucy Liu’s going to play Joan Watson...” And I went, “Oh.” I got hold of the pilot script just to check it out. I don’t know, we’ll see. I think there’s room for us both to coexist. I don’t feel threatened by it and I wish him the best, which is as diplomatic as I can be.

It’s a strange position to be in...

It’s very odd. I did say, “Well, I’d prefer you didn’t do it but you’ve got a kid to feed, a nice house in LA and a wife to keep in good clothes.” When you get used to a certain standard of living and they waft a pay cheque at you, what are you going to do? I think Jonny was like, “Mate, I’ve got the f*cking mountain to climb here [to reach the acclaim of Sherlock], you’ve got nothing to fear.” I wish him the best of luck, but I’m a bit cynical about why they’ve chosen to do it and why they cast him.

“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. But those eejits saying they’re doing it for socio-political reasons? Fuck off, no you’re not, you’re on a jolly and you’re getting away with it. It makes me want to belt them, make them lame for a bit so they’re dependent on other people’s mercy… It’s very hard for me to talk about it, because I came from an incredibly privileged bubble so the minute I open my mouth I can sense the comeback of, ‘What the fuck do you know?’ And that’s fair. But my sympathy is with the people who do know what they’re talking about, who have been brought up on estates and live morally decent, contributing lives and who have seen opportunists destroying all their work.”

[Cleland Plantation] was home to a community of disenfranchised men, women and children who — in one of history’s most shameful passages — were treated as property, and often worked to death, in service of the British Empire.

‘I sometimes think about what went on here, and it brings a tear to my eye,’ says Mr Tempro. ‘Thinking of the struggles of the people who occupied the place can be very emotional.’

Intriguingly, almost every single one of the brutal slave masters who held sway here boasted the same, highly-distinctive surname: Cumberbatch. ...

Cumberbatch has also revealed that his mother, the actress Wanda Ventham, had urged him not to use his real surname professionally, in case it made him a target for reparation claims by the descendants of slaves.

On why he thinks Downton Abbey was “atrocious”:

"You rarely see a piece about this class of people that's this accurate, funny and pointed. We're not making some clichéd comment, 'Oh, isn't it awful the way there's this upstairs-downstairs divide'...

Everyone was held in their place, but what was honourable about it was that there was a duty of care from the top down.”