Benedict Cumberbatch Quotations

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.

Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame.

I have an appetite for the normal in my life, as well as the abnormal.

I never was obsessive about anything I watched when I was a kid, except maybe 'The A-Team' and 'Airwolf' And I loved 'Knight Rider' and then later 'Baywatch.'

I wish my 15-year-old self had known about my allure to the opposite sex!

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.

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.

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.

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.

The world of 'Sherlock Holmes' and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.

The more charming person is the person who admits the other person is more charming.

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

Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.

'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 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.

Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.

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 wasn't born into land or titles, or new money, or an oil rig.

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

I got live tweeted once by someone who was opposite my home in some rented accommodation. He was actually describing on twitter what I was doing. 'I took a shirt off, I went to the window, I put a shirt back on... ' And I've got blinds in my flat!

I drag a lot of stuff round with me that I don't need.

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.

Someone will always hate what I say. There’s always going to be somebody spitting blood about my wooden-faced, toffee-named, crappy acting.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

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!

I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.

'Sherlock' fans are, by and large, an intelligent breed, so they've gone through my back catalogue and got what I've done, why and how I've done it. There is some obsessive behaviour, but I worry for them rather than me.

I love theatre, and you learn too much as an actor and enjoy too much of it not to want to go back a lot.

As an actor, you are aware of how a role can seep into your real life.

My mum and dad had worked incredibly hard to afford me an education.

Fame is a weird one. You need to distance yourself from it. People see a value in you that you don't see yourself.

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.

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.

A woman who knows that she doesn't have to get all decked out to look good is sexy. A woman who can make you feel smart with her conversation skills is also sexy. I believe the sense of humor is important.

There's so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.

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.

I'll always do 'Sherlock' - it's something I'm not going to give up on.

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.'

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.

There's no shame in stealing - any actor who says he doesn't is lying. You steal from everything.

I am a PR disaster because I talk too much.

I've been broody since I was 12, but I can't just get anyone pregnant. It has got to be the right person.

I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.

I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.

I struggle to learn by rote. I've had meltdowns on set. Which is embarrassing and shameful.

I've been quite a late developer on the clothes front, but I've suddenly realised it is one of life's joys.

Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

Any privacy in public is a hard thing to negotiate.

I had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor.

I was always performing, doing silly voices. The teachers realized I could go one of two ways: be creative or destructive.

I was happy as an only child, but I've always wanted to be part of a bigger family.

If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people's expectations, then you can go mad.

'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.

Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.

Maybe it's because I was an only child, but I've always wanted kids.

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.

One of the best things about being an actor is that it's a meritocracy.

We all want to escape our circumstances, don't we? Especially if you are an actor.

When are you ever settled enough to have kids?

When you see a good horseman, you're unable to tell where the instruction is coming from. It's like telepathy.

When you're a kid, 'Star Trek' is a slower burn. It's funny, it's entertaining, but it also has a maturity about it - which is its universal appeal, I think.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan's 'The Browning Version,' where my job was to make school-masters' wives weep with recognition.

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.

There's a huge raft of roles that actors in our culture perform, and you can see any one of about three Hamlets in a year. It's not something to be completely daunted by.

When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don't really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it's not fair that others aren't doing exactly what you're doing. I do have that.

I want to be able to play trailer-bound fatties in a Judd Apatow comedy.

Every job is incredibly different, and I love it because you're picking up skill sets and experiences. It's the university of life.

Talking about class terrifies me. There is no way of winning.

I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.

I was brought up in a world of privilege.

I'm not loyal to one genre. I want to mix it up.

If I'd had fame early on, I'd have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should.

Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and '90s to make sure the school bills were paid.

My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a 'desert rats' tank operator in the Second World War.

I'm interested in art for all. I don't want it to be only the sons and daughters of Tory MPs who get to see my plays.

It is a wonderful thing to get married young and become a father.

It's very easy to be cynical about any kind of interference in things that are beyond our skill set.

Looking for happiness is a sure way to sadness, I think. You have to take each moment as it comes.

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

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.

Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I'm also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated.

I think the characters are supposed to be an open book, blank canvas.

I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.

Cumberbatch - it sounds like a fart in a bath, doesn't it? What a fluffy old name. I can never say it on a Monday morning. When I became an actor, Mum wasn't keen on me keeping it.

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'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 like to think that we’re revolving on this planet and revolving through the galaxy. I love having context that’s so much bigger than I can fathom. It’s fantastic to realise how insignificant you are.

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.

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 think it's fair to say that, yeah, I'm playing Doctor Strange, I get there.

Sherlock [Holmes] is on the side of the angels, but don't think he's one of them. He uses similar means, but it seems to be for a better purpose, one would hope.

[Season 4 of Sherlock Holmes will be] myopically dark. You're talking about the end of the universe darkness. You can't see in front of you and would walk into everything dark.