Benedict Cumberbatch People Quotations

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

It does get strange when you realize people will hang around for hours to get a glimpse of you doing scenes outside.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Honestly, it's very satisfying, and I'm very, very happy about how successful the last few years have been. It's great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I'm enjoying now.

I think playing any iconic role when you're stepping into big shoes, into the shadow of people who have come before you and you can't process that.

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.

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.

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.

[Doctor Strange] is difficult, he's arrogant, but he's kind of brilliant and charming and you'd think, "Yeah, I'd want him on my head if I needed brain surgery." He's good enough to warrant his arrogance and he respects other people but not when he thinks he's right and he'll just do what he deems needs to be done when he knows or feels that he's right and the problem from humility's point of view is that he is right, he's really really good at his job.

I love doing impersonations of people.

I had to imagine myself into certain aspects of [Julian Assange] character for our version of events. That involved extrapolating based on clues in his biography, his public persona, photographs, and other accounts of him by people who encountered him during that extraordinary period from 2007 to 2010 that we charted in the film [The Fifth Estate ]. So, it involved a lot of research but, sadly, no contact with the man himself.

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

I play enough other mad people, as well and some sane people, to vary the palette of what's scrabbling around in my head and soul to bring to the floor, as a storyteller.

I'm very proud of the work I do, but I genuinely can't involve myself with an audience as early as somebody who's not part of the film can. So there's that side of theater that appeals to me, where you give something and the response to what you've created is a communion between you and the dark that contains however many people. It's thrilling not having a reflection other than through the people you're communicating with. But people ask, "What do you prefer?" and I don't have a preference. I love them both. I really do.

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.

It's great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I'm enjoying.

This 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.