HD~ BAFTA conversation with Benedict Cumberbatch

[Music] all of us about Rizzo thrilled and proud of your success so thank you for being here veneks and we can't wait to hear what you've got to share with us thank you so much that feels like coming home thank you now every great acting career has a notable beginning and one of yours was at your all-boys boarding school playing titania queen of the fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream now what do you remember about that production and that period in your life and how it put you on the path to your acting career I remember that the the deputy house master said well you don't stand a chance is very competitive it's very high level and I thought I'll show you I'll show you that I can play the queen of the fairies in an all-boys boarding school age 13 I mean I count the banister with being quite physical I mean I was I was a I was an athlete I was you know the mother rugby teams and cricket teams and all sorts of other things and was part of the cool and did lots of manly stuff let's put it like that so I sort of got away with tottering onto stage being very foreseen and wearing a week that looked a little bit like clear Lane crowned with a kind of cut paper pineapple I seem to remember sort of what it looked like and here's that picture now yeah it's not going to be like that tonight is it it might be I might get back on the balloon but you were part of the Harrow Drama Club the Ratigan Society which maybe doesn't get enough praise in your sort of rise to success what were some of the instincts and lessons you learned in those days which still sustain you now in your career well I mean you know that just going back whether the Ratigan society was mainly a theater-going society but it was also run by Martin Terrell who was a truly inspirational teacher an English teacher of mine and he mainly had charge of in very loose brackets the modern sort of output of classic of drama sorry it's at the school the every year there was a traditional I mean we literally recreated elizabethan stage the globe stage we had two pillars we had an antiquity with everything of the detail of what John Wanamaker was actually at that time recreating the Jesus collages schools costumes Shakespearean costumes which had come from period dramas from the BBC or from other kind of films or graphical enterprises I mean we're incredibly lucky and then at the head of all of this was this amazing teacher called Jeremy lemon another English teacher a very very very knowledgeable well respected Elizabethan scholar who just happened to be quite a great a good actor a very good actor great actor but he would he would teach you by Romans he would literally give you line readings which to start off with you're 13 and you're looking at Shakespearean programs what's a prose with blank verse it doesn't read like prose it does something alien to it obviously there's the most extraordinary words or newness of these were anyway long story short this man made it read like pros so the next year when I was Asian for Rosalind in as you like I don't know don't know finally I was the best one since Vanessa Redgrave so you know I you know I knew what I was reading because it literally had been open to me and like unlocking a code a key to it it just read fluently like modern prose and that was him that was Jeremy that was his Baroness and a lot of other very smart students who had done those productions a few years in a row but going back to the Ratigan Society used to take trips into London which was just wonderful cuz it was the bright lights it was you know everything that the yearning of wanting to be an adult and also it was my parents world it was my world that I wanted to go into as well it was it was being in the audience of often really great productions like another P Wilson starring the deep blue sea I remember going to see that I remember seeing three times I would see Stephen delaine's Hamlet which was the most extraordinary you know so that was one thing it was just like this wonderful thing of okay that that is actually a realizable profession it's something that all my peers who are a bit kind of like well whatever sometimes after they've seen something they were utterly transfer that transfixed and transformed by it and couldn't stop talking about it and I thought yeah this is I'm good I'm glad this is what I want to do you know really really inspiring and then we do these extraordinary productions that Martin would direct everything from City of Angels a great great musical just just about to have a comeback in the Donmar covered us I started well once my voice broke I went very quickly to playing old man I played Willy Loman at 16 and a half I played Arthur crocker-harris in in the Browning version the Raskin play when I was all of 18 so yeah and then carried on that tradition University I played cracking Krapp's Last Tape when I was 21 it's ridiculous but it was a lot of fun um so yeah I guess um it taught me a hell of a lot and as far as craft goes just the amount of variety the amount of imagination and hatbox variety of transformation and challenging work to do and and and roles to play I it couldn't have been better also we didn't really have a property until my last year so it was making do a lot of it was making do in these odd spaces so acoustically they were very peculiar and sight lines were odd and sometimes a very very small intimate studio spaces and other times there were big kind of speech rooms or all sort of auditoriums like this so not such as this but you know and that was that was good that was good it was like a sort of obstacle course a kind of way of grafting a little harder to achieve your end so I think that paid off great dividends and carried on into the stuff we did it stood our students at Manchester same kind of scenario no theatre we had libraries we used we had Churchill's and streets meeting rooms in the Student Union I mean all sorts of found spaces and we had would create something whether it was in traverse or t-shaped or and a thrust or or the traditional sort of prose arch approach of fronting playing that was really really gave me a great deal of learning and as to how to you know exist on stage in the life of time you interrupted your acting studies to take a gap year teaching in a Tibetan monastery in Darjeeling India how did that experience shape your worldview um it always full that was like a magic thing I really am very jet-lagged Wow I mean I don't we got all night Avery really that's that's a big question a big answer as well it was the most extraordinary experience I was 19 and it was sort of a continuation I think that it's all acting experience it's all I mean anything the life teaches you there really touches you deeply and profoundly can be can be drawn upon and used somehow in your work I feel and the amount of connectedness and alertness and awareness and being present in a moment that that whole culture of Tibetan Buddhism that I was teaching in and observing every day and by the end practicing on retreat for a two-month retreat has served me every single day of my life whether I'm working or not so that's a huge leap massive and without me going into the basic tenets of Tibetan Buddhism actus I could take a long time it's it's just it's such a profound gear shift as well so obviously our Western sensibilities to live that sort of stoic Lee really I mean there's something very basic and grounded and focused and in kind of a great great integrity and everything that they do so amazing to be amongst that kind of grace as well and taught me a lot taught me a lot and I owe them a lot I will hire them more than I gave them because it was a very unfair exchange I mean I was I had we had fun I made them laugh they thought it was great fun to have this sort of odd eccentric English school bone and it's but I think you know I definitely know a lot more than they did karma wise I need to probably go back and teach for an entire lifetime to make up for the six months of learning I had from them but it was a truly profound experience and it experienced the highs and lows as well I mean I'm an only child but I've always been very curious this was a very lonely experience at times no it varies only the languaging cultural gap was was very very large at times some some of them spoke quite good English and physically geographically there were other students my age who who are on similar placements in and around Darjeeling which is where I was in West Bengal but they were about an hour's Jeep ride at the sort of nearest away from me so you just had to get on with your week planning or lessons building bits of classrooms whether it was you know chairs or blackboards and and and class structure and how the hell to teach when you don't speak the mother to home very well if at all was was tough was really tough but you kind of fall back I hopefully what some of what you might have learned that at school you realize how pampered you are very quickly at school this thing of character building a boarding schools I mean everything's handed you on a plate you've got a routine you've got you put your clothes in a bag and then it comes back folded and laundered I mean it's it's absurd you know there's nothing of washing powder at public school plus you don't get your hands dirty so that was that was it was great and I thrived on that I actually really enjoyed that aspect of it and yeah I cannot worry about about this one it was amazing spiritual and theatrical background you first make your breakthrough in theatre doing classic plays at the Almeida the Royal Court and the National ultimately having perhaps your bigger stage of success in Danny Boyle's Frankenstein what was so special to you about that heralded played to charge to play both roles to have that experience with Johnny was just extraordinary to be able to be having to literally swap mindsets to trust the other actor doing the same thing that you did the night before and having a completely different experience either side of that that mirror was was was magic and the level of physicality was great I mean like I've biked previously played roles I think I think every role requires an actor to have some kind of physicality that's focused whether it's their own or something very different from themselves but what I mean as I'd done specific work with reference albums a play Stephen Hawking which was similar but this was another level this was evolving something from well it's just trying to basically completely strip away any idea of how to use a body so you're utterly alien to how you inhabit it and that that whole experience our whole experimentation with what it would be like to be born utterly at naive and fresh but in a body that seemed 35 odd years of existence was a real challenge but I only I said to that I only want to do this if it's for both parts you know I want to have the stretch on in both in both arenas and it's an amazingly powerful story I mean it's just such a beautiful book and could teach us all about humanity I hate the way it's been hijacked as this sort of totem for bad science you know it's actually about bad humanity which of course is bad science but it's it's simplified into being a Frankensteinian GM crop food or chemical preservatives you know it's it's I hate the way it's being linked to that because Frankenstein have a headlight it's yeah but just vilify I mean just it's become a byword for something bad and what happens to him is something tragic it's not innately evil do you know what I mean it's not he's not a mad scientist going it's alive alive I know he does that in the film but in the book it's very much about the psychodrama of a child who loses his mother and is betrothed to the woman who passed on her sickness to the mother that died so he becomes obsessed with this idea of bringing death back to life because it's his way of controlling loss which is anyone knows who's ever grieved or experienced the loss of a close one it's it's it's a terrible thing to come to terms with is you you have no control of the death and and its effect so it's a tragedy is an absolute tragedy Beauty creates this beautiful innocent symbol of what humankind could be at its most innocent and it's corrupted by everything that it meets and again it's about the nurturing instant nurturing influences rather than something that's innate so you know I thought what and Nick did with their version of the script was obviously very much focused on the creatures story but I think there are touches of the delicacy of the doctor that I loved loved loved playing as well so it was just a thrill and I mean it nearly killed both of us it was sort of painful it was so bad I still got scars I got a cut on my summer around there and what we'd had this original thing at the beginning of the play when he comes out of the skin I don't know if you guys have seen the live version of it on the in cinema or and lucky enough see in the theater but it basically began with this birth and he came out of this womb-like structure and it was just on to this sort of matting this bit of flooring but in the original when we did the first tech run event it was a sort of basin of amniotic fluid this kind of jelly stuff you get on kids TV programs you know like gunk hey kids it's ganking and but it looked like this weird horrible birthing for us you you came out dry or with a bit of that on and then into this pool and it didn't work very well because it was like basically being a baby seal on board a ship that was tilting like that you just you kind of go out and was you just skidded I skidded across the stage and it was all very well all over the place not the most dramatic stage which was fine well it was a it was very dramatic and then you know sort of I recovered from that and then sort of one of the stagehands was going yet it seems to be getting bigger the pool of liquor oh no that's blunt that's blood you're bleeding I just literally sliced open part of my leg because mark Roberson would match this beautiful set but it was like razor blades did the wooden and metal slats just were like the nice little gap for a bit of you know human size hair too specifically or human you know as a piece of hair to be cut with but um but listen I mean all the scars and hits going out of place when I had plantar fasciitis which for anyone who doesn't know is a very big body pain in the nerve of your foot so you can hardly rest any weight on it and you'll be suffered for our we definitely suffered for us but it was it was really worth it really worth it you've created so many tremendous characters on television - Stephen Hawking you mentioned Vincent van Gogh guy Burgess but the one that's had the most global impact is Sherlock now when you were approached to do this this show obviously this character is the most dramatized character in all of literature so how did you set about the daunting task of putting your own mark on a character that's been played by so many other people by reading the books and trusting Stephen and Mark who have the sort of ultimate fanboys who kind of you know when I first heard of the idea it was an idea itself and I didn't know which writers were attached which writers had actually come up with it I thought why you know why why fix something an eight broke I just thought it could be just a cancer you know reignite the franchise around an idea rather than just examine what's great about this detective and then I read the script and then I saw who'd written it who'd come up with the idea I'm in very very safe hands these boys really really know their stuff and I did I just I went back to the books and I just asked them questions all the time and I draw I mean Watson is writing this first person witnessing of this extraordinary creature and it's very thorough he's a doctor he goes into physical detail about the way the man sits and postures how fast he is his mood swings his temperament of every scale and size and and and his brilliance and also his is failing so it's it's a wonderful blueprint to work from and a lot of its drawn into the scripts anyway but yeah that was that was kind of it and also just not to watch any other versions because you know I grew up watching Jeremy Brett and the reruns of I mean every one piece crushing and oh god my mind's gone completely blank browser - thank you very much Watson I mean I use I kind of they were there definitely there and I remember during the first sort of housings of trying to get him right and you know see what to play with as far as levels I would sometimes turn to Martin and go bit to Bret bit more into a bit a little bit Livermore Mike Lee than Brett I don't because Jeremy was amazing but it became something that was about him in the end it was an extraordinary thing to watch but knowing him as I did because my mum was very good friends with him and him most of his life it was kind of tragic as well because of what he was suffering and it was but it's still extraordinary and I still watch reruns of it now I dare to watch them that and I watched Johnny's as well not all of them because there are so many I wouldn't have time to do mine but it's yeah he's wonderful in it wonderful and that's the thing about the role is to remember I was something like 74th I think or fifth I mean there been many of us so I'll get something's right I'll get something's wrong and that's it just have a go let's talk about your film career now I mean you start off with with great supporting roles in the likes of start at the 10:00 atonement warhorse and it goes to a bigger roles in ingrateful like the fifth estate star trek into darkness through sort of 12 years of slave it seems like the whole identikit approach how to build a film career but what decisions are you making when scripts are presented to you are you looking for a certain thing are you steering your career in a certain direction well what is it that makes you decide yeah this is the role for me each time and lots of things what I've immediately done before whether it's theatre television or film and that's the other thing I don't it's I don't view film careers purely in isolation from the others i I've been lucky enough to be able to go back and flex muscles in those so I don't know but when I read a film script I think it's just it's many many things as many things thinking very carefully because of course you know there's immediately when I say well I often get asked when I'm talking about Alan Turing that you know you played a lot of scientist I immediately get very defensive it's true I have played a few but not that many on film matching I played a very stupid man in the sense of Patrick Watson start up a time I've played a very sweet but kind of godless guy little Charles and in August Osage County and you know Ford wasn't necessarily that smart he was broke man selling a slave to unknown psychopath in 12 years of slave so I kind of booked a little bit of that but I you know I played Joseph Hooker who's a botanist where am I going with his science I don't really know how do I look at scripts how do I think of what to do when to do it really does depend on lots of things so it depends on who else is attached who's written it who's directing it what I've done before what the challenges of the role are what are the things I feel I haven't done before I think it's the usual criteria really there's no there's no I don't have a secret formula and I do just chase work that I want to do or accept work that I want to do if I'm in that lucky position which sometimes and I am and it sort of worked out alright but I yeah it'd be blast receive yeah but it's great the way it sort of all worked out how have you planned it and you can't I mean anyone saying that they've planned their career is kind of lying there's so much of it that you have to let you have to roll the dice you know you have to take bets I mean I I would do the fittest date for example again tomorrow if I was asked to play junior nurse Angela film about him however much it bombs and was a flop or whatever else you know you want to term it I'm very proud of being asked to do and what I were and the work had to do in it so again that wasn't again it was about doing it was about doing the role really not about calculating whether it would be a safe bet or I don't know a career move there are moments of course where you go what that would fit nicely with what I would then like to do say if I want to do a big film and I know I'm going into Henriques I'm going back to different theatres that that that's that that's nice to calculate but at the moment I've just been really kind of riding the wave of roles you said that you're very quiet riding the wave right yes it's something thrilling waves yes you're hanging a ten in Hollywood you said that your film career doesn't exist in isolation and I think that you're sort of rare among a list actors that you keep going back to do radio as well are you do this wonderful radio sitcom cabin pressure you do Rumple you do sort of audiobooks a lot of actors in your position wouldn't keep going back to to radio what is it about you your discipline your history your decisions that sort of leads you to not say oh I'm just doing movies now but to have a career that deviates between theater film radio audio books the power of storytelling you know you just you have a completely different focus when you're in front of a microphone as you're not concentrating on a shot or you're not concentrating on this energy there in the live auditorium you you'll it's just it's very intimate and you can you can have an awful lot of fun without me actually do a called cabin pressure in front of a live audience but we rehearse it and talk about it before then on our own it's it's just a completely different muscle to flex and how to get all that zapped you know I mean III buy it took meanwhile at drama school to sort of to sort of be myself rather than all these wonderful things I've been asked to do at school and university so once I found that I then kind of I loved I loved slowly after because you have to ignite when you're beginning your career I think you have to step through the door and people have to go right with that source of who you are and you sort of because of who you are right for this band of roles and I was very nervous of that because I never wanted to be an actor that was based around versions of myself I wanted to have as much fun pretending to be anything other than myself as I could possibly have not to denigrate people who do that not to say that I don't like to do work that's close to myself I'd love to do more of it now in the future but I just felt for me and this does time to the answer to your question it's about being something other it's about doing something that it takes transfer sports you and hope for your audience with you and when you're working with a mic friend you can get away with murder with your voice doesn't matter what you look like you can be a lot of fun with it as well and there's there's a very different kind of connection to the material you're still working with other actors if you're doing a drama or comedy but if you're doing an audio book that's suddenly you are you're literally a painter with words and it's your canvas and that's that fantastic and I recently did a reading of the spire the William Golding book and you did the other thing is when you and I read it before I went in obviously to make my notes and but when you're reading it line by line word by word like that you I personally I don't know any other reading experience that's like that so selfishly because you don't have to sort of give it to the rest of the world it's a wonderful way to read a book you know every single dot and and I it's just amazing the detail you realize in the writing when you're when you're reading it as a in that format as an audio book so yeah that's one reason I do audiobooks is to read books properly so the only time you get to do yeah and that's a very long way to read books I'd say um but you know it's in all seriousness yeah I think it does it all adds it all adds to the enjoyment of being a storyteller which is kind of what the crafts about I guess at the end of the day and what an amazing story you tell in the imitation game are your latest film let's talk about your performance as Alan Turing how much does it matter to you that with this movie you're able to give that man the glory the acclaim and the dignity that he was maybe robbed of in life well thank you very much if we do do that then we can all go home happy and thank you it means a hell of a lot I I mean I cared about him before I read this script and before I started playing him but having this engagement with him was was such a privilege and and I missed him I we filmed the end of the film quite near the end of my shooting schedule and I I grieved him not as an actor grieving a role but actually just what all even playing the emotional beats of the scene it sort of got out of control I was leaning into something which was basically standing outside of the role and completely empathizing with what he'd experienced and just realizing the full tragedy of the end of his life but to go back to a broader answer of the question it means a massive deal to bring his story to a wider audience the amount of people that seen the film and are shocked by how little they knew of the full story and and of his tragic end as well means that it's a story that needs to be told and this man is a hero he should be as Obama I think in 2011 said you know you excited him with Darwin and and Newton and they both got their faces on banknotes and he's not on the front cover of textbooks whether their history books Social books whether their science books and you should be it should be you really should be he wasn't interested in self publicizing he there was a moment I mean Andrew Hodges biography if anyone hasn't read it is a fantastic way into understanding the work and the man and the world and was the book that the film was was loosely based on but fantastic source material for me and he talks about this it's he had moments by which he could have stood up and said look this is what I'm doing with with algorithms in particular and he didn't he chose to focus on artificial intelligence more but even with that you know he was never interested in going I'm Leo singing dancing bullets are not for the surprise winning um help me out audience of clever people thank you though Christ wedding scientists that he should be M he's the father he's the father of the modern computer age he's the father of computing but he's also of incredible philosophical uh philosopher scientific philosopher and a technician someone who was able to create his ideas and with a huge amount of help prophecy but also in his own right and in the midst of all of that the most extraordinary human being someone who was utterly shaped by his circumstance I feel the more the more I think about him the more I read about in the more I too think about all the time especially with all the stuff around the film now and um it seemed to me that even from childhood this child who had a stammer how how isolating how difficult that would have been to just form the usual social bonds and have the ease of play and interaction and how it's cool enough now if you have a standard let alone in in those not Victorian but still pretty Victorian in principle times at those schools and parents who are in the diplomatic who were living a life that was very much the 19th rather than the 20th century he was born into a barbaric world during the First World War and then faithfully entangled with the second and Anna miserable that's this very sensitive child that needed a lot of loves that had a profound need for love and that was denied him because of palling social parameters of the era seeing the homosexuality as being morally wrong and an illness and something that was curable with Eastridge and injections or at least punishable these string chases it's just barbaric and and yet sadly all too prevalent still now in any form of fundamentalist or extreme view you know the scapegoats the ones who escape goaded are still the same minorities and homosexual men and women a right at the forefront of that discrimination and and even having even even within our permissive society if that's not to call the term for it we know there's still a massive lack of equality in my opinion but anyway the point is he suffered all of that and he didn't even at that point he didn't martyr himself he just was very open about his sexuality but he didn't ever parade it he wasn't somebody who was making himself into a cause and by which he became a great hero great great standard-bearer for that cause and you know I just think there's so much of the world w to him that whether it's the things we hold in our hands calling which we call phones which are basically more powerful them or the computing put together that goes to the moon for the first strip-side it's an extraordinary thing that he began and he was part of a lot of other people doing I would have to acknowledge that he wasn't just on his own doing all of this work especially with the code breaking in the second world war he adapted what the poles had already achieved with their code breaking machine but without his adaptions without his his changes we wouldn't have broken enigma that's a fact and he was right to the forefront of the scientific endeavor to mechanize the whole code breaking process in the middle of the Second World War Bletchley and you know people have estimated that brought the Second World War to a to yearly conclusion they're saving near fourteen million lives I mean that's that's an act of heroism um he didn't all the battle for 35 years he couldn't talk about his sexuality he couldn't talk about a lot of things in his life he found it difficult to talk he was incredibly contained and fragile and so to be able to tell his story on the big screen to bring it to a wider audience he may make Aaron and I submitted the whole thing but I mean I'm in the wonderful position I want to shout from the rooftops that what an extraordinary man he is and I'm thrilled I've got the chance to blame really Fred you're taking on the most complex character of all next year in London when you do your Hamlet at the at the Barbican what does it mean to you that tickets were that sold out faster than tickets for one direction and Beyonce combined if you liked it then you should have put a redial on it I don't know it's it's it's wonderfully embarrassing I guess it's brilliant it's brilliant Shakespeare at the heart of it you know and it means that people might come and see that play you haven't seen Shakespeare before and revel in the extraordinary nature of that particular moment and his dilemma and hopefully will hold them in a spell that Lyndsey Turner is already cooking up which is just it's fantastic with a wonderful wonderful production team it means a world it's very exciting people say were you nervous you bit nervous we'll know means I've got an audience which is great I mean it'd be much much worse to put all that work in a guy go hello if you ever think about the contrast you were talking earlier about doing Shakespeare in like tiny rooms and yeah and unconventional spaces yeah well the Barbican as well the bubbler to them and they don't think this it's an amazing theater that in itself is really exciting we took a long time to choose it and it's it's an international theater of great accidents across mediums whether it's dance music theatre and film so I it's really found its home and what we want to do with it is find its home there which is very exciting just before we go to questions from the audience congratulations on your engagement thank you very much how does it feel to have broken the hearts of all the other way around for the people applauding me for the moment that I could you should practice range fill of you for the weird thing that is my life but yeah it's thank you you must be please have a supportive reaction from your well yeah that's why it's better than building Buddhist now if you have a question for Benedict please raise your hand we have a roving mics in the audience on on both sides of the theater and I'm going to ask Anna over there so yeah there's a question in your address there and I just wait for the microphone to reach you please thank you very much I'm very very curious to know about considering all the different techniques and styles of acting out there which one do you work with or choose and considering that you come from a spiritual strong background do you incorporate that into your style I use all of them really I'm a completely sieve and the magnet I don't have one particular processor to I don't think I'd be able to do the amount of work or the variety of work that I'd like to do that I'm trying to do if I had one way of working but is there a process for you yeah yeah potentiated everytime sometimes it's it's outside in sometimes it's getting the look or the sound or the physical feel of a character right other times it's the research other times it's just one sentence or one known fact about that person that becomes a sort of spiritual core or some kind of anchor for who that work for that inner self is and that then starts to dictate the the choices that could be made in a situation and that I may not make but this character woods you know that and that that voice then starts to speak a little louder and I follow that but a lot of it starts with instinct and thankfully very very very good script so immediately you know as someone who I guess began with text I always dig deep in that and I'll quiz the writer if they're alive if not directors and other people who know something about the dead writer and and then start to put that on top of intuition put on what that learning is but it really really really does depend on the job so for example with both Julian Assange and with Alan I found it very difficult to know what to start with because there's such a volume of work of expertise of brilliance in their field there's anecdotal story there's personality there's also physicality for both of them which is whole you know it's a battle it's about war what do I do now you know if I'm watching a film of say Julian talking I suddenly then get drawn into the argument rather than the ways now movies already know what do you know in my remember may not sound like I was rusty enough anyway you know it's that thing of just going right stop I've got to stop listening to how he's saying it and just concentrate what he's saying or vice-versa so that can become that's tricky sometimes so they just work at the same time terrifying that because you don't feel that you've got one thing that you're safe with everything sort of cooking at the same time you're going to it because it turn that one down a bit and put that one up a bit you know but I reach out I get a lot of help I get a lot of help from brilliant many people whether they're costume designers whether they're dialect coaches whether they're directors or writers so ok like I like working in isolation but I like very much being secured the homework I've done can be then brought into a collaborative field straight away so that if it directed things no no no that's not the direction we're going the story's got to aim towards this beat or this is focused and I'm not getting too carried away thinking oh this is what the character is I know some actors do do that they work in isolation or with an acting coach and then they present they work about it and directors sources I don't know what I don't know what function they serve there but I like to lean on my directors and races that's the next Bachelor talk what is your process yeah but varied I don't have one way of working I asked Meryl Streep after watching home has seen I got I was lucky enough to being with her in august osage and the county and she having a cigarette on the balcony I think there's an election like I said I've gotta ask you just grassroots carton horse horse and cart how the hell'd you begin to put vai together how do you do well first of all the effects of drugs alcohol grief how do you do damage victim as well as bullying as well as comedian as well as mother as well as British as well as sister as well you know all of these flavors all of these things that were there and that she just played with so delicately like a conductor of her own Orchestra of the character it was it was remarkable to watch every take was different but editable within its difference and she went oh I don't really know I don't really have a technique do you I know a couple of others like that as well I hope she won't mind me saying that but ya know and it's it's true you know the woman that does the splits in Mamma Mia who does that in that deduce aging decrepit of stature you know you can take you can go in with one one method mmm and this thing of character acting or technical acting this thing's method acting or well technical acting I suppose again I don't see it defined any more I really don't you have to commit where however technically you have to commit to a belief in what you're doing at a moment where it becomes methods you believe in what you're committing to there are days when that's really hard for their distractions and if you're a method actor there are ways of pushing those away but again you know sometimes in controlling things you're actually losing the influences that could off at you in a different direction if you aren't trying to control things through having one particular way of working so yeah there are days when you do hold the reins a little tighter and the other days when you just you want to just run with it and see what happens and see what other people give you as well I think you can be closed off if you come with a really preconceived notion about so I know people have got bladders on going on for a very long time at this time um if you have a preconceived notion you follow that with a real obstinacy I think you're cutting yourself off from such a a wonderful experience of getting energy from your other actors of understanding what they're bringing to the table let alone your director and then where a camera goes and all the other sort of technicalities that fit around that and it depends for some directors they want to position you and they said wait we're just going to feel what this is likely is going to be lovely notes just put your left finger up there there you know I think this isn't really it's like photo shoot Sommersby we just want you to be relaxed just sit back no not like that sit sit to the side a bit more I don't know no to uncross your legs so the NGO sort of is going is this relaxed toilet relaxed I don't feel like and that can be like that with fridge directors as well but the best of them know when to just you know push a button and see what happens and they can change your perception and shift 180 degrees into the opposite direction or leave you alone to just try bouncing around yourself I mean I just did what did I just do I just did now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York and all the clouds that lourd upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried I did all of that in one big take and Dominic cook a brilliant director just became anyway yeah every now and again as I take because he knew that I was trying to new and we had very little time as well criminally little time to that moment but in you that he knew it was deep-seated I mean you how I could play with the different directions so he just let me be only get on with it and yeah other days it's more controls and it was just referencing our the next series the hollow crown in which you play a writ Richard Lee Richard the third thank you very much for your excellent question uh yes there with all these amazing and unique roles you've been playing lately is it hard to again to the right mindset of the character and you know is it somewhat hard to switch from a character like Sherlock Holmes to Smaug the dragon there's enough it's weird because I mean you look at sometimes the outputs very confusing because actually it's all you can sit down I love it will stand up for the whole of the answer this first week with you rest your legs my child's rest your legs I am I need to call you a child you're growing I doubt them sorry but the point is yes no I they are very different but the point is that the work comes out very much in a different time frame to how it's actually done and put together so there are gaps there are huge gaps and as far as getting into a different mindset yeah I don't I think people I shouldn't be saying this because it's a bit like this is really asking to look behind the curtain go oh it's like that is it that's a bit boring you will walk away not be interesting more but basically as an actor you know you we rely a lot on you projecting onto us so the idea of you going we touch that and he does that well yeah but with months apart completely different criteria could be different material and as far as getting into the mindset they couldn't be more different characters one is a fire-breathing serpent out of many hundreds of years old that flies and loves gold and hates doors and the other one is a you know sociopathic show-off and a brilliant mind and a wonderful consulting detective the number one consulting detective and um and yeah the job descriptions are so different that you can't help but get into different mindsets and there are often bleeds there aren't because we are only this you know however much we try to transform ourselves or lose weight gain weight change our body shape movements voice appearance whatever they're kind of masks work is you know there's only there's only a certain there is there's this panic that's it that's that's what I've got to play with so you know there are moments where I can see certain bleeds between characters but they a bit as high as mindset to know very very different and I think you know that the other thing concentrating on material it goes back to the spiritual element of how you read and understand what you're given and asked to do which is to sort of excavate something whereby you hold yourself back and you let the character go further one of the best experiences ever had was working with a theatre director called Katie Mitchell who gave me more process than drama school did in many ways I mean she was she's an you know sometimes infamously fair for her process because I can example so a note session may go like this now darling um I'm also sure about the temperature there what was the temperature and what was going on outside did you get the neighbor's dog honking I'm not sure I'm not sure and where was the were you conscious of the first-born photograph on the dishwasher blow because well it wasn't supposed to be those supposed to be on the kitchen counter do you remember I didn't see that it's very very specific detail she gets you to give these incredibly detailed studies of the work you're doing so I played this guy he's called Chris and brilliant played by Martin crane called the city anyway to come long story short there was one scene where he's coming back to his wife telling him he's been demoted easy really humiliated this character he's working in a super monkey had had a reasonably good city job and he'd been made redundant apart the play was about the structures of family and power structures between the sexes and also what happens to men the emasculating effects are being made redundant and he comes back to tell his wife about this day he's had in the supermarket he's talking about his fellow employees who are having a go at him and I started to character them I started to impersonate them do the voices in movements you know and Katy was like now I know you can do that but he can't do that Kenny was a huge light bulb went on my head I went oh yeah that's that's yeah it's not it's the material is about honoring the character and not about showing off or or doing something beyond it just to show and look I can do that it's you have to you have to keep it grounding the character and when you're playing real people there's a massive amount of integrity that comes with that because you've got the legacy of it being a real story of their story which is a profoundly different pressure but similar in the sense that some of the iconic fictional characters also come with a massive amount of people who believe they are as good as real you know and and you get them all at your peril but at the same time there's nothing quite like knowing that a family might be sitting and watching your work of their relative in the dark of cinema so yeah that focuses the mind pretty sharply yeah it's like a master class hasn't it's really good I thought this was supposed to be back there thank you um you have explained us so how you do what you do and it was wondering if you could tell us I know that depending on the method the actor uses it takes more or less time to get into a whole mind of a character and sometimes it takes a while to like exist that so I was wondering for you especially because you've split characters are so different particularly a character like Khan in Star Trek or like any of your other characters like it's they're so different how long does it take for you to get into a character in and out there's a is that ravine on a daily basis or do you mean in rehearsals building a character for before something or you're being Osage you could answer while you figure it out right here again GLaDOS but uh be quick sighs um at well the main thing I guess on set you it depends what the day holds I mean that seems that we did with carne for example in the Brig I removed myself from the fun of being on that set and it was a lot of fun I just went to my little corner my sort of prison corn haunches sat in my own thoughts and his thoughts it's really hard sometimes you know you can rehearse and plan and and and prepare really really rigorously and then you get to the day and you don't have a good night's sleep a night before you have a tummy upset or you have babbitt and use as there's all sorts of obstacles which can really throw you see you just sometimes have to trust that the work is there there's not one thing is there's not one way of just clicking into it I think so that you know there are moments when it is member the make up sometimes you go right there he is there's a moment where you just going over the lines and you feel okay right now I know I know how I want to begin this day's work I know what I want to take to the director and I know what I want to start with and that's very satisfying it can take it can take all the way up to the third take to realize that though as far as being in character you know III I've always dared to try and come out of character to hear what I need to hear as an actor I would find it and I've tried it a few times it is very confusing and I find it very confusing if I did this all the time to receive information from a director as a character I can't compute that I just I don't have that filter in my brain I I'm happy to step aside and then go back into something but very often when I do that I'm then playing a note so I feel self-conscious and I'm not completely in character the magic of camera and film and few guys often means I get away with it but you know the point is that when it's at its best every every bit of the work is forgotten and you are just you are just sort of present in in that moment but yeah it can be a voice it could be a bit of music helps hugely actually music helps me a lot I listen to a lot of new before certain scenes and they're not just emotional scenes but it could be all sorts of flavors of music that help me get into a mood but yeah just going over the script again and again and again that's that's the primary focus at the beginning of my day's work and then like I say yeah just visually or already something might trigger the click into it but it's different every day sometimes I'll have a breakfast so two things allowed you to button Tyler are you teaching what did that bring into your work as an actor I taught English as a language rather than English literature it taught me it taught me how to adapt to ever-changing circumstances there was an age range in every class between the youngest of 12 and the oldest was 55 and the ability to almost is different as well it taught me how to well it teaches you patience it's very slow progress when you don't speak the mother language and mother tongue and it taught me to be family inventive and improvised actually to just be on nimble on my feet all the time both with you know because you go over the class structure with a way of informing a way of stimulating and a way of rewarding and not punishing but just pointing out that's not necessarily the right or the correct way of using a word or whatever else but um so you build in those sort of tactics like I said led to be manipulative you know something I might have learned being pretty honest about teaching you have to manipulate in some degree or other and just being endlessly inventive actually that was the main thing and that was that was the hardest thing as well you know sometimes out of thin air and there was a great course TEFL course teaching English as a foreign language course very well run but it it's only really applicable if you speak I think if you speak the native tongue that you're being hosted by so they gave us great sort of teaching lessons and methodology but then it sort of required a whiteboard with cause I didn't have a blackboard to begin with I they told me how to make a blackboard dance about something it's walking I got I got handy with my carpentry again so yeah I had to kind of adapt all the time standing in front of a class in front of a group of kids going and then all ranges of Ages going right I'm your sole focus of attention until I get you engaged enough to take part I mean I haven't done any plant annoyed but I imagine the audience participation might be a little bit easy because of that but it won't be like wishy-washy in the nerves because no not this year no maybe next year one of the great things about your career is and you're very choices is you can go from a film like the imitation game to your next one the Penguins of Madagascar now tell us so they were again yeah people you are go there penguins penguins parable we also grab nought lovely now in which you play a wolf now tell us how you use the same discipline and preparation and and seriousness to prepare for a character like that as you would put something in a drama well I went to Yellowstone Park and I completely involved myself with a pack of wolves there became the Alpha after about three weeks it was going quite well until I realized that Christian Bale and Daniel day-lewis were both in that pack and got a bit edgy especially when Tom Hardy turned up with the shape head so then I had to back down a little bit but basically yeah that's that's why I got my wolf on initially and then it was just a matter of you know costume helps a lot I knew once I had that utility belt on that I was onto a winner and naked apart from it so that was good and then then it was just a question of you know helping the artists to render what I was obviously doing completely in the flesh properly and you know I gave them a few steering you know guidelines with the size of certain parts of the anatomy I don't think I made many friends there are some parts of the anatomy that are completely omitted but um it's their version of what it would be not mine and yeah that's pretty much how I did it he's made us laugh tonight he's moved us with every performance ladies and gentlemen Benedict Cumberbatch thank you very much

Channel: Jilly Wu

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Id: 6FMzpJwdOGQ

Length: 53min 48sec (3228 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 27 2017