Welcome to Benedict Cumberbatch Central, fansite dedicated to British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, best known for playing Doctor Strange in the MCU, Alan Turing in 2014’s The Imitation Game and for his iconic performance as Sherlock Holmes on BBC's Sherlock. Our aim is to provide you with the newest updates on everything related to Benedict and his career, always preserving his privacy. We hope you enjoy your stay!
A new commercial for Morris Garages India was released today, in which Benedict presents the new eletric SUV, MG ZS EV. Watch:
He also recorded a message for MG India, which was broadcast at the automaker forum today. It starts at 3min 57s:
It was announced earlier today the official line-up for the next year’s edition of the Sundance Festival and, to our incredible joy, ‘Ironbark’ is one of the movies to have its first world premiere there. Variety reported the line-up with only the official synopsis so it’s still unknown the exact day that the premiere will take place or which of the cast/crew members will be in attendance, but we’ll keep an eye on the updates that are about to come. Read the official synopsis below:
Ironbark (U.K. – Director: Dominic Cooke, Screenwriter: Tom O’Connor, Producers: Adam Ackland, Ben Browning, Ben Pugh, Rory Aitken) — The true story of a British businessman unwittingly recruited into one of the greatest international conflicts in history. Forming an unlikely partnership with a Soviet officer hoping to prevent a nuclear confrontation, the two men work together to provide the crucial intelligence used to defuse the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Merab Ninidze, Rachel Brosnahan, Jessie Buckley.
The Sundance Festival will take place in Utah, USA and will run through 23rd January to 2nd February, 2020.
Channel 4 released earlier today the first trailer for ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’, their TV adaptation of the classic children’s book written by Judith Kerr. The trailer give us a glimpse of Benedict’s voice work as Daddy, the father of the main character of the story. Watch it below:
Evening Standard‘s Magda Ibrahim was at The Fayre of St James charity Christmas concert on Tuesday and told the newspapers’ podcast the reading Benedict did at the event was actually of an extract from a book he’s writing!!! She said:
He didn’t kinda give us too much of a clue about what the book is called or when it’s gonna be out but he and when went into the pulpit, he just said to us ‘yeah this is gonna be the first reading of this excerpt from this book and you’re all the first people to actually hear it’, which was quite exciting, and he said the only other people who’d heard it had been his editors so, I mean, it was quite an interesting reading, really. He described it as being quite unique and it was, yeah, definitely. I mean, I suppose I describe it as sort of stream of consciousness, really, but the bit that he read, it kind of tied in quite nicely with the event because it was sort of talking about the fact that you’re born and you become this individual but then, gradually, things happen and you realize you’re actually part of a wider community.
Here are the clips we’ve got of his readings thanks to @cateblanchyes and @kovalchuk_mary, who shared them on Twitter and Instagram, respectively:
For the Cumberbatch peeps… his hair is so dark 😂 pic.twitter.com/1g8KWa1cUJ
— Katie Blanket (@cateblanchyes) November 26, 2019
Transcript:
[…] Instantly recognizable. You stand anew. Remade. You’ve rebuilt yourself, but you are different.
[…] You become a heroic, unique embodiment of both the things you cherish and the things that cause you pain. As you grow into this living idea, you become instantly recognizable among the millions of faces in the world. You become that which you think you are. You stand before the world and you say ‘I am here and this is who I am’. But there’s an influence at work […] and positions in the locus of the divine. Together, we are equal.
How Benedict of Benedict, to write a book exploring such themes. Hopefully, it won’t be long until we get more information about the book!
Update on 1st December
This post has just been updated to include another video and its transcription and to correct an error. Even though I (Gi) had included the aforementioned video in our post about the event, I still somehow failed to include it on this post. I also completely misunderstood the very last word of the very last video. My apologies!
Last night Benedict attended a BAFTA screening of the ‘1917’ movie, which took place at the ODEON Leicester Square in London. The screening was later followed by a Q&A session with the cast & crew in attendance; Benedict, director Sam Mendes, screenwriter Krysty Wilson-Cairns and actors George MacKay e Dean-Charles Chapman. We added some photos to the gallery:
Continue reading Benedict Cumberbatch attends a BAFTA screening of ‘1917’
Tonight Benedict attended the eighth The Fayre of St James, a charity event promoted annually by the Quintessentially Foundation in partnership with The Crown Estate in benefit of a particular charity. This year, the one in question is The Felix Project, which works against hunger and food waste, collecting surplus food from trusted suppliers and delivering it for free to other charities and schools so that they can offer healthy meals to the most vulnerable. They provide enough food for nearly 3 million meals per year for their 200 partners.
Hosted at St James’s Church in London, the event is a massive celebration of Christmas, featuring live performances, carol-singing and festive readings. Here are some pictures and videos of the evening:
Continue reading Benedict attends The Fayre of St James charity Christmas concert
Actor Cameron Jack talked with Absolute Music Chat about his work on Patrick Melrose and lavished praise on Benedict! Take a look:
DB: You were also in Patrick Melrose which stars Benedict Cumberbatch.
CJ: Yes, I was. Nina Gold’s an incredible casting director (Star Wars, Game of Thrones) she was casting Patrick Melrose and there’s a couple of scenes in a treatment centre when Patrick goes onto rehab, and they were looking for a Scottish drug addict. They were having a conversation in the office and I believe two of her associates came up with my name. I went in, read for it and had a couple of days on that.
Benedict Cumberbatch is just an incredible actor. I’ve never seen an actor that gracious, with that much talent. He said hello to all the extras, he came and introduced himself to all the people who were around for a day or two, was extremely caring, very compassionate. I very rarely sit opposite somebody in a scene and think, ‘Wow!’ It’s only happened to me twice, once was Benedict and the other was Gary Oldman on The Dark Knight Rises, where I’ve thought, ‘I think I’m in the presence of genius here.’ Most of us there’s a little bit of blagging, a little bit of talent, a little bit of charm and all those things that come together but I sat there at the read through, watched him and I thought, ‘I completely understand why you’re a star.’ He just oozes charisma, he’s intense, got great comedy timing, emotional, interesting to look at – he’s just got everything. Just to share a couple of scenes with him was brilliant but again… a drug addict. (Both laugh)
That’s just lovely, isn’t it? You can read the whole interview here.
Variety has just reported that Jesse Plemons (Black Mirror: USS Callister, Game Night, The Irishman) is joining Benedict and Kirsten Dunst (his real-life partner!) in Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog.
He’s replacing Paul Dano, who was attached to the project but had to drop out of it due to scheduling conflicts with Matt Reeves’ upcoming The Batman, in which he’s playing the Riddler.
According to news released last month, filming will begin next January in New Zealand, Jane Campion’s homeland.
Netflix acquired the distribution rights to the movie last May and will release it on its streaming platform and in theatres in 2021.
Source: Variety
Read below a great interview Benedict gave to Physics World, the British Institute of Physics magazine, featured on this month’s issue but also available online.
Benedict Cumberbatch: the imitation game
By Andrew Glaster
Continue reading Benedict talks about Science and cinema to Physics WorldOver the years I have spoken to scientists and actors alike for my podcast The Cosmic Shed, where we explore science and science fiction in equal measure. One actor I’ve interviewed who has portrayed several different scientists is Benedict Cumberbatch. He’s starred in three science-themed movies – first as the botanist Joseph Hooker in Creation (2009), then as the mathematician Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014), and most recently as the inventor Thomas Edison in The Current War (2019). He’s also played Stephen Hawking in the 2004 TV film Hawking and Werner Heisenberg in a BBC radio adaptation of Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen (2013).
“I do like my scientists!” Cumberbatch laughed when I asked him how he had come to be cast in these roles. “I think it’s partly because of the way I look. I could never achieve anything like what these men [I’ve played] have achieved but I think what I can do is portray the thing about them which enabled them to achieve these things – that is their humanity.”
It’s the great stories that most attract Cumberbatch to these parts. For his role in Creation, it was the intimate friendship between Charles Darwin and Hooker that grabbed him, with the pair having exchanged more than 1200 letters over a period of almost 40 years. In one, for example, Darwin revealed how he was “particularly glad of our discussion after dinner; fighting a battle with you always clears my mind wonderfully”.
TIME magazine has released their list of the 10 best minisseries of this decade featuring “Patrick Melrose” amongst them:
Patrick Melrose is one of the most distinctive characters in contemporary fiction—an English aristocrat who uses drugs, sex and nihilism to cope with the residual trauma of the sexual abuse he suffered as a boy, at the hands of his psychopathic father. In five short, semi-autobiographical novels that span 40 years, following Patrick from his lonely, privileged youth through his middle-aged attempts to create a loving family for his own sons, author Edward St. Aubyn immerses readers in the often-addled mind of this intelligent, sardonic, wounded man and the people who move in and out of his life. Benedict Cumberbatch—a longtime St. Aubyn fan—was the perfect actor for such a difficult lead role, capturing Patrick’s wit, his depression and his long, slow evolution into a less broken person. Each book has a distinctive tone and set of narrators, and in five episodes that each cover a single novel, writer David Nicholls (2015’s Far from the Madding Crowd) and director Edward Berger (The Terror) make subtle stylistic choices that recreate those differences. “Bad News” is a harrowing lost weekend in New York; “Some Hope” moves fluidly through the social minefield of a society party. The antidote to vague, predictable antihero TV, Patrick Melrose dispelled the aura of romance that so often surrounds such narratives and replaced it with hard-won maturity.
Click here to see the complete list.
