Benedict Cumberbatch has upgraded to playing big parts in big films - notably, his lead as Doctor Strange, the latest from the Marvel superhero factory, which to go by the trailer is Inception crossed with The Matrix and then some ("I would advise people not to take any drugs before watching"). He plays a surgeon who gains mystic powers, and it's a role that could do for him what Iron Man did for Robert Downey Jr. Put another way: if you thought Cumberbatch was famous before, just wait.

Benedict Cumberbatch on why he made that speech

“I think it’s because I got so riled up. Like a lot of parents, over that summer... that picture of that boy [Alan Kurdi]… a beach we can recognise from family photographs, from holidays that we’ve all had ourselves... it’s not about privilege, it’s about a child dead on a beach because he’s tried to escape a war.”

© Jason Bell

Benedict Cumberbatch on hosting refugees

"One of the arguments was, when are you going to put a refugee in your house or your flat? And, you know, I do have a house, but it’s empty, it’s gutted, there’s no electricity or water, so that wouldn’t work, and I have a baby in my flat, there are no spare rooms… I wasn’t saying, ‘Yes, open the doors to everyone, yes, give them our jobs and our wives,’ and that whole kind of stereotype fear that nationalism has leapt on."

Benedict Cumberbatch on the last series of Sherlock

“It might be the end of an era. It feels like the end of an era, to be honest. It goes to a place where it will be pretty hard to follow on immediately. We never say never on the show. I’d love to revisit it, I’d love to keep revisiting it, I stand by that, but in the immediate future we all have things that we want to crack on with and we’ve made something very complete as it is, so I think we’ll just wait and see. The idea of never playing him again is really galling.”

© Jason Bell

Benedict Cumberbatch on Brexit

“I was in Wales when it happened. And there is such poverty in Wales. There are real problems. Real problems. You know, we used to film in Merthyr Tydfil, one of the most impoverished places in that country, and of course people are angry. Of course people want change. What people are f***ed off about is that they were promised change that won’t happen.”

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