Benedict Cumberbatch In Conversation | BAFTA New York

I in all seriousness I've kind of grown up with his face and it's been in the industry for ten years and that's getting on these hottie lists I just got to go right doesn't make any sense because I was knowing it a thousand hottest face when I started out so I know it's I know a lot of its projection which is which is kind of flattering about the work I suppose I think just to begin with I'm curious do you remember the first time you acted in any capacity even just fun around the house or something and then was there a moment or an instant or something after which you knew that this was what you were gonna do with your life I think anyone who's been the mother of children should really answer that question I probably acted up when I was very very young and too young to remember but um as far as doing stuff at school I think my first memory was being a town crier in a weird sort of fairytale fantasy and I I remember one of the reasons our remembers there was a video of it and I am I came on the middle of stage and clash these big symbols and sort of announced very proudly what was about to happen or that part of the story just sort of moving the narrative on but when I watch the back of the video I just I did that and then I stopped in the middle of the stage whilst the other people coming on and just turned around and looked at it instead of getting off stage but I mean there's my early acting memories probably that and I remember it being a big hole I can't remember where it was but it felt big and quite scary so yeah I think that's honestly my first memory although I'm often reminded of a time when I was on in a nursery play and I played Joseph and apparently happy I'm you saw a lot of clips of me getting very angry so maybe that was a seed for it because apparently I pushed Mary off stage because she was taking too long which and then a poor Mary who ever was everyone laughed I mean it terrible and I haven't that done that to a leading lady sensing what kara maybe a bit in in the imitation game but you know I'm joking well you know people may or may not know that you went and got a master's degree at at the professional theatre of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art I just wonder if you can talk about what what the biggest takeaway from that was and also I know you know often actors are asked to describe their method or the technique approach and I know that you have a opinion about this which was interesting interestingly reinforced by one of your co-stars so I would just like to ask you about that um I mean I'd I try not to go in with one specific technique because every job is it's so unique in its different requirements so there's a focus and there's an understanding and approach to work which is sort of universe on there there are Givens there are you know there are there are certain parameters you have to work in as an actor and sometimes they're the hardest to maintain timekeeping is one of them and I'm the Taurus about of that and learning your lines and I'm alright at that at times and sometimes it can get overwhelming it with especially that clip you saw at the end with that character he's quite for baisha so there are good days and bad days but yeah I would say that it's just I've always felt instinctively that it would limit the range of the work that you are capable of doing if you had one method that you imposed on everybody else that you're collaborating with and so obviously as a student actually first I got my MA at Manchester I think it's an MA lambdas Oh but I'm not sure it was really a postgraduate one-year course I'm not even sure I got an MA though I think there was more to do with Manchester I did three years of drama and an awful lot of plays an awful lot of acting but an awful lot of other things around that which fed into the acting and I think that started my kind of understanding that it's part of a total art form it's not just something in isolation because I was studying I don't know everything from sort of post-world war ii american theater to dramas therapy and prisons of probation to writing courses to sort of early russian revolutionary cinema I mean Russian Revolution cinema and it just gave me appreciation of context and I think from that it gave me an appreciation of what the duty is to kind of also the enjoyment of further education as an actor to further research your role so I went into drama school with that and and of course lambda like many drama schools don't various approaches very you know the inside out or the outside in but for the first time I realized after maybe I don't know maybe ten years or something of playing all sorts of different roles especially after my voice finally broke when I was about I don't know 22 I'd played a lot of girls I was young I played Rosalind and Kate and I don't they came to me the show played Petrucci over and last I play titania and Queenie the fairies that was my debut at the all-boys boarding school I went to and but I I realized that I had to be a version of myself and you never fully escaped yourself you always partly there of course you are new in the limits of your own body to an extent so it's about it's about understanding that you can do the hatbox stuff you can have great fun doing everything from playing crapping Krapp's Last Tape aged 22 to Arthur Willy Loman rather in Death of a Salesman at 17 - Rosalind aged 15 literally two years before and and have fun with that you know really really kind of diversify what you what you want to try and change yourself into but drama school taught me about just being still and centered and having a very kind of measured approach to text to not jump the gun to sit in the words for longer not not jump to intuition all the time or at least if you had that first instinct that you could then work a long way around it to come back full circle to that initial feeling of understanding a character or a moment or an objective obstacle Tova karma and it employed that language so you know you did all this stuff you get on acting page one and and that was really useful just to just to put the brakes on it just evaluate where I was with that my real understanding of it and not just skim over it which obviously I think we had done a lot at school and have you when you've worked with various interesting alright he's trying to please try to get me to say when I work with Meryl Streep first bit of name-dropping in the evening but um I uh you know she and I had this conversation because I was watching her bring virus into life and I was going how the is she doing that she's playing she's playing grief she's playing esophageal cancer she's playing the effects of the cancer drugs or not the drugs she's playing the uppers and downers that she's taking and she's playing everything that's been boiling in her since a child since an abused child being an abuse calendar I just saw this actress at the height of her powers being able to play every single note of her character like not even a conductor of an orchestra but like she was literally running around and playing every instrument and it was really phenomenal and I thought how the hell did you begin what was the first in and - did you work from the outside and this one and she Benny we had a cigarette was election night and we were chatting about the Bacchus I've got to ask you I'm just it's wonderful watching you work and how how did how do you start do you have a base that you always build from and she went what do you mean like a specific technique um and I would yeah edge when no I think you know I think it changes all the time oh my god my god it's to hear someone say that because that's that's what I do that's that's what I'd always done and simply for the reasons that I think it keeps you it keeps you able to adapt your craft to learn from those around you and so yeah there some jobs that are much more like the method than others I mean I work with Katie Mitchell and the theatre and she said she provides such an intense process you don't need to have gone to acting school in order to be able to be in one of her productions she gives you such a kind of complex multi multiple ed multiple ed kind of focal point to to hook your character on whether it's the temperature of the room whether it's the sound that the neighbor's dogs just made whether it's the memory that the photograph that's not even on the set but that you've talked about in rehearsal is giving you as you look across the room to the counter to the left of the wife you're talking to lying about the fact that you've been fired I mean just all this stuff to the point that we got to first night and it was a real shot coming an audience for a start it was just like what you know that happened and I was like what that's not funny because in my mind that's something very very different and then once that was played in it was it was wonderful you just really had a not disregard for the one it's much much though she's criticized for that it really isn't what she's about to she just builds a dolls house and lifts to one of the walls off and I I've always I've always loved watching her work and thrilled to be a part of it and I really the first time in my life didn't fear judgment on the press tonight I thought to hell with it I've got that's really what it all should be about anyway you know you should just be committing to the work and not worrying about the perception of it you've made that compact with the director and your fellow actors and it's about carrying that through and it's not just about personalities about building to that last performance every day you you're making new discoveries and moving it forwards within certain confines your character you've got certain tactics you can employ to overcome your obstacles but you can't just suddenly bring in something you could do as another character you can't just deduce the out of it like Sherlock if you're someone who has a little lower IQ and is not so kind of focused as that man is and so you know I eat that was extraordinary and I took a lot from that and the seeds of that were in drama school but beyond that yeah that was that was the first real calling where I went wrong I can I can escape into something that's so focused that I sort of become lost in my task rather than self-conscious about what the effects of what I'm doing is going to be on an audience and in terms of just on a day-to-day level what do you feel brings out the best in you would you be somebody who responds well to a lot of rehearsal or prefers not to would you be somebody who on in the case of film or TV you know if you can if you're asked to do many takes is that something you appreciate it you know sometimes people say it maybe take some of the spontaneity out of it where do you fall I think a lot of takes yeah I'm really bad at that I mean it doesn't mean that I do a lot of good takes it just means I like doing it politics but I mean I don't know and various rhythms come in with different characters in a situation so some directors have said your third your best first as a warm-up second you're getting used to it and the third you is good and then everything else you're trying to chase that third one but I mean other other jobs it's the 18th sometimes I can't remember what I my record is it it's pretty heinous whatever it is but it as far as warehouse who goes to go back to the first part the question absolutely I mean when it comes to film and television as a luxury especially television but it's sort of essential because you you get to a point where you have some concrete grounding for what you're then stepping into so you can tackle the day's work when there are going to be technical difficulties running out of time or light or cameras not working or whatever it may be then you're you and you have to just hit the ground running have that in you and also you can play you can have fun you can evolve it because you know you've got that kind of bedrock of preparation and also that you're in collaboration with everyone else you're working with you're not on a solo flight and that's really rewarding and again I suppose that comes back slightly to method I think if you're for me if I'm locked off doing my own thing in there's certain days we have to do that the brig scene in Star Trek I just I couldn't play scramble with friends with Zack and Chris I had to go and I got to go into my corner to think about my and why that's more important than Bechet I mean nobody just sorry well so articulate but you know it's that thing of just being in opposition to people you can't sometimes you have to build a little bit of a cocoon of concentration the second of the third series of Sherlock I have this massive monologue in the wedding scene and that was it's intercut with loads of flashbacks but it's basically a sort of schizophrenic one-man show and I we did it for five days I really had to pull myself out of any kind of jollity which of which there was a lot I mean an awful lot it was great fun they had a lot of fun without me so when you first entered the work force as a professional actor what sort of a career did you envision for yourself as far as balancing it or not balancing it between theatre versus television versus film and then can you take us back to the decision that came I think maybe three four years ago where you were offered an opportunity to go to Broadway with a play that you'd already been a part of and made a very it was a very difficult decision for you but you elected not to do that because of sort of an idea of where you want to take things so it was very so which decision as well because it affected a lot of other people I did do it eight months before we were supposed to go but apologies to Nancy Carol and Adrian Scarborough and Thea Sharrock I just wanted to mix it up all the time I really wanted I wanted to I'm in my theater training Atlanta was a classical theater classically English theater one year course and a postgraduate course which I really enjoyed and got a lot out of but you know it would that was it that was the main focus because I thought a little bit old-fashioned in my kind of understanding of it I thought that what I do what the great actors that have been ahead of me had done and inspired me to do was the idea of starting out in the classics then maybe a modern play or two and a few roles in television and then you know getting a film role but keep going back to theater and that is what I've done that is kind of what I've tried to do the unhappy accident of that play being such a huge success was it came at a point where I thought Christ I've actually got some momentum in a medium where it's much more of a closed door there's a very little long-term memory it's much more immediate your currencies something you really have to kind of work on in film quite fast to a to a degree I'm saying this in cogitate everything I say tonight is contradict but I know that but it's just I guess that's what the personal conversation is really it's just a point of view but I am every time I say anything I'm thinking the opposite is also very true that's the kind of yeah that's my head you're getting into my head it's great being me so yeah I am I really I was really lucky to have just had a few breaks obviously with Charlotte but also Tinker Tailor also with Frankenstein and being cast in warhorse and that all came to the same kind of point where we were supposed to be coming here to do this Broadway production of after the dance which might still happen might be a film we don't know it might it's something there might be some life left in it it was a wonderful experience in London but I felt that I'd had that experience there and selfishly I wanted to make some capital out of this momentum that was building and I I'm glad I did because I got Star Trek and job visa slaving or was Osage County and yeah it were he worked out well for me but um and and and the Fifth Estate so I kind of um I was very yeah I took a gamble and it paid off really so that decision as you say led to all these other roles where that have only further raised your profile since then and one of the byproducts of that I thought I want to ask you about is clearly you know you are now a conservatively more famous person than you were at the beginning of this and I wonder how that impacts you as an actor because correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me that part of what makes many actors great actors is the ability to kind of go out observe other people behaving as they as they do and channeling that and when you become quite famous I think that it made me make that loan yeah so I mean does that make your life harder as an actor there are ways of their ways of remaining disguised in plain sight as gel it would say but the you know to be honest there are a lot of famous actors who are still doing great work so they're obviously managing to observe something of real life however bizarre there's get but yeah it was a concern in a sense but I'm what I value more than that is privacy and I there are means and ways to extract yourself enough to be able to observe human nature and work through whatever medium of research or understanding of character or the human condition that it is you need to be able to get that and surprisingly you know some of us do take public transport still I've got a motorbike as well and I Drive a car sometimes but I you know it's not exclusive to the world of everybody else but I know what you mean it's it's now more about being conscious of this sort of thing we're not I think a private conversation I thought we were comes in everyone but you know that's where that is where then you know you're constantly at the kind of mercy of people who are basically with smartphones walking publishers so you kind of you under being a performer understanding what a camera is and what being observed is I'm very highly attuned to that so you're right to switch that focus back so that I'm the one doing the watching is is is it is a new craft for me but I'm managing it and there are still corners of the world that don't know who the hell I am so that's that's always good but um there are also an incredibly supportive amount of people that recognize me but let me Carrie my business and it's fine it's just a sort of skill I guess to balance and it's interesting I mean I've got friends here tonight and you know they've seen this sort of change where but you know in it basically and one of them said that we said you know they'll night unless I'm actually in my house with your you and your house and I with you I don't get you because there's always always going to be some of the wants to interact have a conversation or thing always happened last night we're in a restaurant and this screen just got pushed aside there was a flash bugger off my face and I was like wow that's that's a first I always lock the toilet door that's what I mean you should anyway yeah but yeah and I don't know yeah it's weird it is with it is it is it's a it's a learning process and I'm in fact my infancy of it but you know I think some of its helped by the fact it's happened in my mid to late 30s so you know there's a there's a sort of perspective which kind of gives ability to breathe and try and extract yourself a little bit from the madness and say no and just learn that you know you can politely decline something and you'll just step back a little bit but also how to engage as well and I'm more comfortable to my own skin that I would have been out that's happened 10 years ago without a doubt so and in that way it's a blessing yeah so I don't know the exact chronological order when you did these things but in the past year we have seen you apart from Sherlock in feather state hobbit 12 years of slave August Osage County goat season well Thursday's sure like and star trek into darkness and it's just it's just unbelievable in one year you can't clearly it's hard to even imagine how busy you must have been and so I wonder you know do you do anything specific between projects to sort of cleanse the palate in a way or are you able to jump from one thing into something completely different relatively seamlessly I I formed a production company I did a short film that was hardly cleansing the palette but I know I do I try to I've been really fortunate and it's a very high-class problem to have but it is it's increasingly difficult than something I want to try and change in my work pattern whereby you know the last sort of - - I mean this is a bumper crop of five months worth of film releases coming out from about one and a half years work but in those one and a half and two years before a lot of projects had dovetails and that's kind of that always makes me anxious because they're not not for fear of repetition although there is always that fear but I always choose one of the criterias only way for my choice of work is is to have variation you know selfishly just to keep myself amused and to stimulate myself in a different way so even though I don't know I had a bank holiday weekend between the end of the third series of Sherlock and parade's end and before Sherlock I just I literally got off stage having at this right yeah I got a stage four on Frankenstein I think had about a week before we started filming Sherlock I was pretty damaged after Franco sign both Johnny and I were pretty beat up so not ideal but they're very different characters very very different characters and it was really weird this I'd literally was picked up in a car on our last night from the National Theatre our after party got in a car driven down to Strathfield say where we were filming I was on set on a horse charging with 80 other horses it sort of 8:00 in the morning with spill go Spielberg going that was great want to do it again that's great and just going yeah yeah I think I do just sort of slide he's performing off my saddle but I mean such a different kind of Russian and experience to finishing a place of being on that kind of a set with live animals I mean you cannot compare the experiences and it was like what after the what what what play was that you know so it was that's the most sort of intense turnaround I think I've had ideally yeah and I think it's important you should have and I try now to have a shedding period of a bit of time so I just get rid of the last one start having some fun then I just sort of Center and go back to neutral and find out who I am friends and family very handy for that as is travel and just isolation from the madness of it all in any shape or form and and then ya start rubbing it up for the next one just slowly cooking the reading and thinking about what the challenges are going to be speaking to people they know more about my character than I could ever possibly dream of knowing and relying on the brilliance of the outside in stuff with it whether it be wardrobe or Aramaic and and then obviously the collaboration all the way through that with a director and conversation in person and in rehearsal hopefully at this time that's the ideal that very rarely happens but I mean you know it would be good it happens every night again but yeah and particularly I think with with you played a number of people who were real who are in many cases still alive and you know going back to Stephen Hawking right through Julian Assange and others in between I just wonder how from what I gather your real real real researcher will do a lot of preparation and but yet in some cases you seem to have met with the person in other cases you elected not to or you couldn't or whatever I just how do you approach it differently when it is somebody who who is a real person most recently Asajj well there two things I suppose that are immediate very obvious which is there's a moral responsibility because that person in particular his life is still very much evolving his situations very precarious and there's a responsibility to not do him an injustice which a lot of his followers and him said that I did but I was trying very hard not to my correspondence with him was to try and eat from him what I could bring to you know work the part into something more empathetic I wanted to meet him not to study him and then turn him into a two-dimensional our soul I wanted to make him somebody who's complex and human and inspirational and extraordinary and unique and did who's done something which is profoundly important for democracy and I believe I believe he has and hopefully some of that is reflected in the film I think people who are slightly more they know it's partisan the right word I mean as in impartial is what I'm trying to say I did like to say that it was that and if if anything it was slightly more biased towards towards his point of view I don't think it was I think was fairly balanced but I understand what his I understood I don't understand what his his beef was with it quite rightfully you know was based on two poisonous accounts to his idea of what that story was for his experience and to him it was something that was yeah absolutely antithetical to everything he tried to achieve and you know he was dancing on the on the grave of the box-office flop that it became but I'm still really proud of it as a film and I'm really proud of my work in it and I'd stand by it if I was off at the part again tomorrow I'd do it in a heartbeat I mean to try justify it do justice to a man like that I think he's the only Australian I've met or I met but I had conversation with or heard opinions of that doesn't think the accents good ever all that I'm not like him every other Australia's you know III but seriously there's a real care of duty and when it's slightly less I mean that was very complex because there was a morality that was very current and it was so politicized every action of being involved with it was a political statement as much as you know he thought I was sort of working under the auspices of the DreamWorks / the State Department I you know as a hired gun I I really I can tested that in quite a quite a fully email to him but um you know I feel strongly as an actor that you should allow - you should be allowed to try and dance with these very complex subject matters and it's tricky because most of the real people I played as pretty extraordinary characters whether it's van Gogh whether it's Stephen Hawking whether it's Julian during Alan Turing recently and you know I can you know what we'll all we do is is the most light vague interpretation or impression of these people and their true depths and brilliance and you know the cinematic art form in itself is something that condenses years worth of experience and moments that stretch out into boring infinity into a Eureka moment or a you know a moment of high drama everything about it is riddled with complexity because especially when it's real life you think what goddammit I know from my research and I know from talking to this person all from my reading that it didn't happen like this and it raises a big question it makes you go oh why the hell are we doing anything about real people but yet we need some access I think some narrative access to understanding these extraordinary people in these extraordinary times so I always look at it and I this is I notice as a mattered get out but I do always look at look at it as a fictionalized truth and I think most canny audiences know that they to go to something which has as rich and complex of subject matter as well yeah the mathematics of during a code-breaking or you know astrophysics and everything that Stephens amazing and and Julian and computer hacking programming slash WikiLeaks and everything that he did you you you expect people to come to it with a certain degree of cynicism about well this is a film of this if I really want to find out about it it's a conversation starter it's not a fixed point to judge everyone by so there's that there's that as that engagement and then there is obviously the thing that these people do still exist and often not all of them but obviously but not Van Gogh but you know there is a there is an audience that already understands these people through a medium whether it's biographies or articles or or documentary so how do you bring about something that is both new and invigorating and different but at the same time has an echo something that has to be a reflection of these people so that that balance between interpretation impersonation is kind of vital and you're having a really good to hair-and-makeup team that's always helpful a good script is also helpful good directors ultimately the most helpful you think you could ever have um and I've been very blessed on that front well aspirins having spent the last few weeks going over just about every interview you've done and all the profiles I found that one of the edge that's that's a long week though well it was did you see your family I mean ah you have a family in the book not anymore after that no no it was it was actually very interesting because you know they're certain obviously recurring things that you say but also that that interviewers or profilers would say and one of the things in terms of a complimentary adjectives they they're sort of a sense that you're timeless there's something about you you could have just as easily been dropped into a movie with Trevor Howard or you know Peter O'Toole or somebody as as you are today and blessing of having a weird face away somewhere between an otter and something that people find vaguely attractive or just an otter which is vaguely attractive yeah it's I mean I you know on these haughty lists I just gotta go right doesn't make any sense because I was knowing it the thousandth hottest space when I started out so I know it's I know a lot of its projection which is which is kind of flattering about the work I suppose but what I'm saying all that for is you know I I started out ya know you know I'm not I'm not a typical beauty so basically I've got a long neck and long face that's usually period that's usually some kind of inbreeding weirdness so I'll run with that I wear some high collars and get on a horse or two and fine with that but not all the time not all the gnarled sometimes I'll just get a collar in the 21st century drama turning yeah as you'll notice I didn't sure look so ya know it's I kind of the or the otherworldly I mean I had a great great English teacher called Martin Cyril Oscar you remember him and he said it's weird you remind me of William Blake and about what the hallucinating visionary poets of the Romantic era yeah we know it's just you're quite an old soul and I went oh I kind of like that and that it kind of an old soul did time and say what as I'm not a new soul an old soul old smelly leather self and I kind of I kind of ran with that because um I was fortunate enough to grow up in England and you're surrounded by your heritage then it's a very deep very long very kind of old what Harry I mean not my heritage but like the heritage at the land and the culture and I went to school where there were buildings that were 400 years old and those were the new ones you know and it was kind of inspiring and it meant that whatever I was doing in my context in my time I could always see what the past had evolved into and realize that we're not all that far away from that we really aren't and we you know it's important to be able to recognize it and to be able to honor it and and learn from it as well and I can't remember your question know as great as get out it's very hot in here okay um okay so another another thing that I sort of jumps out to me about your work from Sherlock to Tinker Tailor I mean you've talked about with Tinker Tailor that it was a particular thrill to work with Gary Oldman as somebody who you'd really looked up to but also sort of mask shifting I think was the word you use that anyone any actor worth their salt would enjoy the opportunity to to be putting on a variety I mean yeah it's it's it's a gift the idea of being a spy for an actor is it's kind of a gift I was half hoping I might get tapped on the shoulders by mi5 or six or some one of them and well because seriously I mean it would be a great double bluff that there's a bit like guy Burgess going my party's going I'm a spy and no one believed in them because he was but um it's kind of because we're so sort of you know showing off here's actors so it'd be the worst kind of subterfuge but the point is but the point is we shift masks we do we kind of do that you know that's kind of what we do it's part of our job so the idea of playing someone in one moment in one context and being utterly different in the next it's it's meat and drink for an actor and to do that subtle amount of it and also in the carries brilliant world of extraordinary characters and very real Tomas Alfredson and with the creative smoke and nicotine that's the same an alcohol you just dank gray yellow sort of bad scraggly TV toned ungraded film well that that film was I mean you could smell it it was it was it was very visceral that experience of stepping back into the past so you know it felt it felt that there was a contact with an emotional realism to spying which is sort of again mean drink because it's more profoundly something that's recognizable because they all have human stories there are things to sacrifice they will have loves or passions or prerogatives and moral compromises and also the sheer boredom of it the drudgery of it the betrayal of it all these constantly shifting sands of loyalty and understanding and diplomacy and that you know that that's that's a very rich canvas for an actor to play with so I I was thrilled when I got cast and that and with that company of actors I mean you'd have to you have to have done really badly to have done a bad job because it's just everywhere you look you're being inspired you know and and Gary in particular was just a joyous individual to work with and you know a man at the height of his game again I think in that from just incredible incredible performance so we talked about films about history or about moments necessary then you know here's this here come here someone comes along and says Sherlock Holmes which has probably been been made into more plays and I'm sorry more shows or films and just about anything yeah it's the most German sighs emotive fictional time I think I mean so to somebody says let's let's do it again we're gonna update it for the 21st century you know was it immediately clear to you that this was something that was a that was worth getting involved with or when did it become clear to you that it would work well the Saudi evolution was that I heard about it and thought that sounds like excuse to you know Rhian franchise something to make money it could be a bit cheap and cheesy and then I found out who was involved I thought it's definitely not gonna be cheap and cheesy these guys are very good writers I knew Steven my mom had done coupling a few episodes of that Sara Alexander's mum and Margate is was a huge hero of mine as a student with League of Gentlemen and I just I knew this table was good and I knew their involvement in who and I knew what they'd done with that and I thought well I gotta read it I read it and I completely fell in love with it and then I went to meet them in in a flat in Holland Park and Sue virtues mother Beryl virtue once to virtue is called Beryl virtues daughter but now I think as you're around she's so strong but they're both extraordinary Beryl there's a massive Titan of the industry I'm sure she's done many of these conversations she's she is a legend legend and I didn't but I I don't think I'd ever met her before so she came in it was her flat I wasn't aware that I knew I was being sumac and Stephen and to read for it and think one of the scenes I did was definitely the one of the first episode where I get John to come back to the flat and I've got I just want him to type a text for me and I'm sort of reposed with the steeple hands and and he's just disgusted that I've said it's urgent sportin can you make it and he just comes over and basically as a secretary for me within the study of studying pink and and so hosting the scene no just before I remember barrel coming and she had tea and biscuits and I sort of turned to sue and went is that mrs. Hanson and she went no that's my mother okay it's a no good start not a good start talking forget that happened forget that happened start again cancel and continue and I did I know I made them laugh a bit and it seemed to go well and you know I knew mark because well there's an actor we were in start of a time together and we really got on so it was fine it was a lot of fun and I thought this could be great I would really enjoy doing this just as I was getting my scooter I got a call from a jet saying they're really really really really really really keen for you to do this and I put my helmet on what finish a conversation first otherwise that would've been painful and I said Christ this could be really exposing and in a good way but I thought this is really this is a very iconic character and whether it's good bad or indifferent there's going to be a lot of focus on it as there always is with any incarnation of the great great consulting detective so I took a bit of a deep breath and I thought do I want to do this is this the moment to do that because I kind of mean either been other things hovering around that I might have pursued or might have done and I just went no no I I kind of wanted carry on doing the work I'm doing which is there it's getting recognition but it's you know it's just it's leading to the next job to the next job and I was fine with that I thought this is a really big sort of step into the limelight and then I thought it's really good material I can have fun doing it we did the pilot it was great the PBC loved it said one and a half hours and then that was it and as far as the the reach of this I mean I've read estimates they initially thought maybe two three million people are going to watch this it was like the they weren't it blew away from almost the beginning expectations as far as how many people cared about what you were doing was that was that very gratifying to see well we were all round at sue and Stephens and we watched it I try to remember if and I think I don't think Martin was that something he was doing a job but we all watched it and I I was really aware of this immediate audience response i I don't engage with social media I have done a reddit but that's that was it and I really enjoy but fact the reasons we could talk about in a minute that would take over my life and probably ruin it but um I was just amazed at how vocal and immediate this response was and it was it was pretty good it was all very good and by and large I think I mean they didn't really the bad tweets and these tweeting and blogging and just everything just came alive that was and that's very rare to have a live experience with an audience when it's television program it's it was a new experience for me I was literally half expecting to sort of you know walk you know outside to get the train back from queuing and just and see like banks of photographers or for news reporters to be abseiling from helicopters dogged what was it like to be a joke and I got that moment was delayed but um it was very overwhelming in a weirdly distancing kind of or distanced kind of way because of us it wasn't in person but we were very aware of it being a bit of a hit yeah not thrilled we still are you talk about some rules being exposing them there's another kind where would be I guess we'd have to talk about the habit with with smog where I think that there are some actors who are resistant to the idea of mocap technology they say you know what's to stop them from just sort of using CGI to replace all you know all of us but it sounds to me from from what I've read that it was a positive experience for you that you enjoyed it and and that you really dove into how you you know into the process of actually being very you know the whole physicality of it also is that is that correct that it's something you actually got a kick out of yeah I mean you know a huge part of what I enjoy as an actor is is the craft of it the dance with the medium that you're working in whether it's camera or stage and the various different requirements that involves and you know we evolved a lot of the language of the visceral visual language with with Paul and Steve at the first am do beyond on Sherlock together and it's it's a collaborative thing and I really enjoy the technical side of what I do I like to then after rehearsing and understanding it and getting something of a choreography of it just lose my and discover new things and probably fall into the camera or whatever but you know just move away from doing something precise and precious but I do have an awareness of it I mean that's that's kind of what we do I think anyone who doesn't completely and there are actually no that's that's rubbish there are there are moments that I've had as well where the director wants you to just completely ignore what's happening with the camera and just be in isolation again like Casey just not know anything about what's happening beyond your experience of your immediate environment that being the car self if it's a stage or whatever the set is if it's a camera and at the same time if you're doing stuff that's a little bit more technical a little bit more visually flaring like Sherlock is and obviously Star Trek and and very much smog in mocap you kind of have to go the distance of understanding it in order not to hurt yourself primarily and also just to make it work make the shot work make the moment work and and then you can go back and now step into something that's some inhabited and this was a completely new vernacular for me and I didn't have Andy there to help me although as I joked you've only done biped mammals and now I've got to do it serpent reptiles so you know I don't know how you're working or translated to small ging but I mean he is the king of it he's the he's the Don of it he's the pioneer of it and he's the master of it and why that man isn't just literally weighed under with Oscars is is is it is a sad I think truth of why it's not being recognized for what it is it's the unloved child of cinema because it falls between SFX and animation and yet it's such a visceral live performance driven form of art form of extrapolated cinematic art it's something that you know green screen you know I understand Ian's grumbles about that it's hard it's really hard because you're continually projecting all your performance to a ping-pong ball and there's green screen and yet you are Gandalf and you know we were in Gandalf's costume and you're doing girls voice you go gallows makeup you again lost continuity but Gandalf slides well you have you had the lines at your player the character you're playing when you're when you're motion capturing but you don't have the same context you're in a room a bit like this fact very much like this wood panelled you got infrared sensors all around the roof the kind of core nursing of the roof you've got this gray carpet my god I could actually do it now I won't and you're just you're just free to position yourself into something which after you walk on set and you feel I mean most of you might have read me saying this before but you feel very self-conscious because you're in an all-in-one gray suit and you've got little reflectors all over you and your face is dotted in a sort of Aboriginal pattern of white dots which you have a you have a caste which in my case was taken for carne and then that Comcast was used for my face which was put on my head holes drilled through it before I was by my face eyes and then these dots planted on it so that every facial movement was kind of corresponding with a coordinate which they then mapped in which you get a lot of in the finished film and you feel like a complete booby you know you just it's it's embarrassing you're kind of walking on going hi everybody I feel silly and they're like I'd better be great it's if you want a coffee or sit down we've got a chair over there it's got your character's name on it smile so yeah he let's go be down in a minute so do you want to reduce or do you want to you know sit down relax I mean we can you know we've done the range of motion under that ceiling you do a range of motion exercise so you kind of literally move your limbs your arms your head whatever limbs your arms our limbs are you know I mean you move your body to get like a full expression of what you might do in the space the volume is they call it and then your onset being embarrassed and then Peter comes down he's padding in a bear figure huh I bet you want it you want to talk about it or do you want to do something I mean then what do you want to do and you go up let's talk about it first because I'm feeling a bit silly can I take this helmet off that has a camera front of my face yeah whatever you want cool okay so with this bit the script and then you work out the intentions and the actions and the shape of the scene and the character's motivation it just all the stud the page one acting and then you get back up to being you know fully kitted out bubi and in my case I'd I'd done a little bit the thing you said about research so I'm chopping out that question just for because I remember they didn't really answer that I it's a security blanket not all of it and very little of it ends up on screen often and it's just to take a little bit more possession of the extraordinaire so some of the things I'm asked to do because it's so far removed from my experience so it just gets me a little bit more it just gives me a little bit more courage to pretend to be something I'm so far from and so for example playing a fire-breathing dragon of however many hundred feet whose ancient lives in a pile of gold under a mountain in a kingdom of Erebor it breeds far you know that's that that's not my daily routine so I I went to the reptile house at London Zoo and I looked at lizards and Komodo dragons and had some fun with that and then I tried to work that articulation into my body so that the boys and girls at weather would have something to base my kind of physicality on when they extrapolated it into the extraordinary finished results you see they are the best in 48 frames in IMAX I have to say having seen in both frame rates that part of the frame rate thing is unequivocably brilliant I think it feels I'm artists acting with a real live and a model or at least you know at least a model if not a real dragon I mean it's extraordinary the seams the seams between the real and the special effects are just you cannot see it with that frame rate it's incredible so I brought that work in to this great carpeted wooden walled room and thrash myself about and did voice work and I absolutely loved that I felt like a kid again you know you feel free because you can only attempt to throw an imagination at that problem you can't research that mind you can't read books about when I was a dragon when I was a young dragon and you know what happens when you get crazy with gobble there's a dragon lien again so I kind of yeah I kind of just I lost myself in it and I had a really good time as some of the awful photographs of me putting really quite terrifying faces on the internet I've apparently shown but you got to go the distance and I loved it I really really loved it and yeah you know I've done physical work before I mean Stephen Hawking and obviously Frankenstein as well and all my work I tried to you know we often get criticized as Western actors as being head down a head up sorry you know and even though our verbal culture is a very linguistic based oral culture very much about the text in England we do some great physical work I mean it's you know the land that Simon McBurney came from to name but one deviate and all sorts of extraordinary multidisciplinary kind of theatre companies as well as you know dance troupes and everything else so yeah I love involving that aspect of it and challenging my body as much as my head with what I do so that's an experience where you're working basically in a room with with a you know a relatively small number of people I would imagine then you go to anyway just drop sorry is anyone else hot yeah I think it is could we could we turn up the icon Luke would that be possible someone's waving their hands but we're not getting it draft okay so so there's that kind of an acting expense and there's then there's the theatre yeah and you know some it's it seems almost invariably your actors say that no matter what the perks of our pleasures of film or TV acting maybe there's something really special about going back to the theatre and that the only thing that they say maybe sometimes you know you hear graves but is that it can become you know perhaps a tad monotonous but for you you guys with with Frankenstein with this alternating of roles and the way you approach it I think it was such a fascinating thing and so just generally theatre acting and particularly in that experience is it's something you enjoy a lot but very very very much I mean you know I think the rehearsal process in theatre is probably the most kind of privileged part the whole experience of being an actor it's wonderful you you have that wonderful sort of suspended time when it's just a room there's no one judging you I mean you're working hard because you want to please your director but you're you're with a company of actors and you're discovering each other and the world of the play and and how to you know bring off your partner and that's that's it's wonderful it's wonderful this it's very close that it's not what obviously it in the end is about it's obviously about sharing that work but which is always a painful birthing process like that thing of having the womb like experience of safety and security and compounding whatever the world of that the players and whatever the requirements are its then you've got to realize that you've got to then get on stage or get in front of a camera to perform it and it was a joy because there was such extremely different characters although obviously with the Matic crossovers and reflections the creator and the creation so yeah there was there was a lot of stuff that I mean on some nights very early in previews there were literal lines that were cross again over always on my part I interned for Johnny's sake he was pretty DLP but um ya know I love that I really love that and in fact that was a that was a complete kind of condition of doing the job I wanted to do it only if we did both roles both parts because it's unique and yeah it's a hard it's a it's the hardest thing about it it is so nourishing like I said because of the rehearsal room environment but mainly because you have an immediate idea of what it is that you're doing but it the real trick and I think again it really hi heart back to well the Frankenstein experience but before that we Katie the the royal court the trick of believing that you're doing something for the first time is a very very hard one to achieve I mean in all honesty there are very rare moments in the third month of a run where you're not very conscious of your audience and the cough that just happened and what's going on in your belly and whether you had a little bit too soon to the performance tonight and what the hell am I going to do with the people that can see the play afterwards and you know that all these outside kind of voices because you know you it's so familiar it's so familiar it's very very hard to trick yourself into unlearning the muscle memory and it's not like film whereby you can change your delivery you can you can give a lot of choices in multiple takes on on a film so some actors don't I like to I like to simply because it's such a rare and an invigorating thing to be able to do and that's why I like to mix it up because then when you go back to film the things that are weird about film like the early weird unsociable hours no continuity oh yeah exactly all those all those new problems are compensated by the fact that you can also not playing the whole character arc exactly the constant new thing is a massive thing you have to really jump in and notice exactly where you are in your character's story line but then you can change you can you can give different within the parameters like I said earlier of the tactics your character can employ to achieve his objectives through your understanding of the character and these limitations as well as its strengths or has you know you can you can still have quite a broad canvas to shift things you do in theater but it's very hard to come in and do anything more than maybe five or six very different things and also you don't want to throw the whole company you can't go guys um I don't know third month of this but we just rehearse that scene we're a little bit worried about and that's that's hard that's really hard because it is a job and this is a job what I do is a job so you know there are there are moments when it becomes like a job and you have to balance that with the craft and the art but you know it I love it I'm very lucky to be able to call what I love is an art a job well before we close with this question from one of the thousands of people who submitted questions over Twitter which you were nice enough to pick the the winning question I just have to exert a little editorial privilege and thrown one more because going this was something that I know is very important to you and I think it deserves to be talked about which is parades end which was a another great performance of yours and particularly there's a scene where essentially you're having to bid farewell to or just say that you don't love a person who you do love and and do the honorable thing over the thing that might be easier and I just wonder if you can take us back to that moment because when somebody was it's like I think I think the scene I was referring to if it's the same one is the one in front of the fender I think is an episode two where he decides all the hypocrisy of this invented Department of strategy in the in the civil service all the hypocrisy where he's trying to basically massage the message by faking figures through the brilliant mathematical mind that he is and a political mind that he is he can't do it he just keeps on seeing no but this is the answer and the War Office saying nobody can't be you've got to make it work so that this is the answer and he goes well just off that I gotta throw myself in front of the front line and I'm not gonna I can't I can't function the way I function and he meets up with Valentine who is furious with him for underselling his ability and also for putting himself in harm's way because they haven't consumed what is clearly a blatantly very strong attraction and she knows that he might well end his life on the Western Front and she thinks it's a waste it's a waste of how he could be helping and he has to stand up for what he believes and I it's just it's a profound it's not it's not very rarely happy with what I do I there's always something I could do better it's not really that it's not really good yeah I got that right it's more it's just more bless you it's more who that person is in that moment and Tom hated it stop it hated it he was I just feel it's too on-the-nose it's just I I don't like doing Christopher has to explain who he is which is what's brilliant about the rest of the adaptation is so reliant on the idea that actors and directors understand subtext I could read the book for the most amazing subtext and profound insight you know into internal monologues you know literally with streams of consciousness and this modernist novel to work their character into layers that you get a little you know kind of top mark of and yet this is a moment where he goes I stand for this this is what I believe this is what I hold true to this and I love that man I really love that Carrington I loved what he had to say about what he felt England wasn't what he felt Society and the duty you have within society the respect of your elders and of your past as well as your present to you know obey and and and help those above and below your station in life and you know he supports McMaster who's a self-made man whose father was a shipping clerk in some way I forgotten the line I think it's Liverpool I don't know but the point is you know he's not against meritocracy winning he's not about a fixed social audit but he's about wherever you are in that at that given time you better be good to those above and below you and I just I just think they're very good principles um yeah well the last one before we liberate you is going to come from Twitter and this is from Naomi at Cumberbatch web and I know and Naomi's question was Benedict do you have a particular motto or creed by which you try to live your life and I got a paraphrases it's a Souza quote and a fan actually sent me a card with it on the front reasoning it's it's something like love as love as though you've never been hurt dance as though no one's watching you sing as though no one's listening and live as though heaven is on earth I just think that's that's great that's about that's about grabbing it all enjoying it and um being profoundly lost in your in your experience of living on this earth no it was embarrassing it was I I mean if you can imagine at the time I sort of I'd say to my friends I'm doing this film about a load of girls playing soccer and it's called Bend It Like Beckham and they were oh really that sounds really uncool

Channel: BAFTA Guru

Views: 139,387

Rating: 4.9690132 out of 5

Keywords: benedict cumberbatch, cumberbitches, doctor strange, sherlock, acting advice, BAFTA, BAFTA Guru, British Academy Of Film And Television Arts (Award Presenting Organization), creative, career, film making, TV, gaming, actor, advice

Id: pWTmfEJMqSw

Length: 55min 50sec (3350 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 24 2016