OK OK, so we’ve lured you into reading this story under a false pretext, namely the truism that you are what you eat. Because, according to Benedict Cumberbatch, during the filming of Star Trek Into Darkness, he pretty much ate his way through an entire Kentucky’s worth of chicken, an experience which has almost certainly put him off dieting for life.

As we’ve discussed before, Benedict had to properly bulk up to play John Harrison, otherwise he’d look somewhat puny and weedlike compared to the muscular Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto. And while he enjoyed pumping iron, the sudden change in his diet left him at the mercy of his own stomach, as he told OK! magazine:

“I loved all the working out, although there was one stage where I ate about 4,000 calories a day and then carb-depleted. It’s horrible. You can turn into a creature from hell because all the fuel you’re relying on to get you through the workout disappears.

“Now I know how girls feel. Diets are shit.”

And he wasn’t even eating an enormous pile of burgers and fries to put on the weight: “I didn’t go for junk food for the weight. It was chicken – all sorts of chicken, and salmon and protein shakes. But we tried to keep it normal food-based; carbs and protein.

“My fellow American actors would walk on set with these beautiful little bags of pre-made meals. I’d go, ‘Where did you get one of those? Oh, a dietician. Can I have a dietician so I don’t have to eat chicken, chicken and then more chicken?’ ”

Well, who told you to eat the chicken in the first place, man?