Benedict Cumberbatch’s first brush with fame was nearly his last – as the Star Trek baddie twice cheated death before he made it big as an actor.

The Sherlock actor was introduced to the world at four days old on page 5 of the Daily Mirror, snuggling with parents Wanda Ventham, who was in Emmerdale Farm at the time, and actor Timothy Carlton.

But before Benedict became a star in his own right he was subjected to a horrifying carjacking ordeal in South Africa.

He was filming BBC series To The Ends Of The Earth in 2005 in South Africa, with ex-Coronation Street actress Denise Black and a local actor, when their car tyre blew.

As they struggled to change it in the dark, six armed men ambushed them. Benedict says: “They frisked each of us for weapons and valuables then bundled us back into the car and drove us into the bush.

The car stopped and we were hauled out and told to kneel with our hands on our heads. We were in the execution position with a duvet over our heads to silence the shots.

“I tried to stand but to them this was clearly a sign of panic or evasion. They ordered me to stand up and get into the boot.

“I heard Denise saying, ‘Please don’t kill him’. The lid opened and I found myself calmly lying that I was claustrophobic and I could panic and die and be a problem for them. ‘Dead body in a boot, problem, not good!’ The lid slammed shut again. A lot of arguing. It opened again and they told me to get out.

“They took me up a small hill away from the others, made me kneel and tied my hands behind my back with laces from the trainers they’d removed earlier.

“I heard, ‘We are not going to hurt you but make one mistake and we will kill you. Lie on the ground’.

“I could hear the others being brought up and Denise talking calmly. Eventually the car sounded like it was leaving.”

After three hours shivering face down on the ground, the petrified victims ran for help and called the police.

Benedict says: “I’ve still got a scar where I was tied up. It was terrifying. The next morning I woke up as a free man with the sun on my face and I cried. I thought I’d never feel its warmth again.”

In the aftermath of the carjacking, Benedict’s gratitude and thirst for life turned him into an adrenaline junkie and he took up skydiving and hot-air ballooning.

But it wasn’t his first near-death experience. As a gap year student teaching English at a Tibetan monastery he and four friends got hopelessly lost for nearly two days while trekking in Nepal.

Benedict, 36, says: “We got altitude sickness and then amoebic dysentery.

“We were lost for a day and a half, trekking at night and squeezing moss to get water.

“We slept in an animal hut that stank of dung and had hallucinogenic dreams because of the altitude sickness.”

(Image: Paramount)

Now, as his fame is set to skyrocket with the release of Star Trek Into The Darkness, public recognition is more likely to strike fear into him.

Recently a Twitter stalker live tweeted his every move inside his £2million North London home. Benedict says: “I would say that it was the strangest fan experience that I’ve ever had.

“It was such a strange and a direct thing to see these tweets saying what I was doing as I was doing them. I found it really worrying and, yes, of course, very hard to deal with.”

Friends worked out it was a neighbour and asked, politely, if she’d stop.

Despite his legion of ardent female fans who call themselves Cumberbitches (although he prefers the term Cumberbabes) Benedict, who plays Captain Kirk’s nemesis Khan in the movie, hasn’t got to grips with his role as a celebrity and object of lust. He says: “It’s all gone a little bit vertiginous recently.

“Fame is a weird one. People see a value in you that you don’t see yourself.

“So when I’m told of my sex-symbol status and all that nonsense I find it laughable, silly. I mean, I’m 36 and I’ve been looking at this same old mush all my life. But it’s to be enjoyed. It seems girls are really going for my Shergar look.”

There’s never been any shortage of women in his life. His first crush was on his mother’s actress friend, Emma ­Vansittart.

His 12-year relationship with university sweetheart and actress Olivia Poulet ended in 2011. Since then, there has been a year-long romance with the fashion designer Anna James and dates with actress Liv Tyler and models Lydia Hearst and Natalia Vodianova.

Benedict makes no secret of his longing to become a father and lists his biggest disappointment as “not being a dad by the age of 32”.

He says: “I’ve been broody since I was 12, but I can’t just get anyone pregnant. It has got to be the right person.

“But to make meaningful relationships is very hard at the moment. Also, I was in a very, very long relationship all through my twenties and early thirties, so I know about looking for the right one, I guess. And it’s tough, it’s tough.”

Despite having actors as parents, Benedict’s first stage appearance went hilariously wrong.

At school in Notting Hill, West London, he starred as Joseph in the nativity play and earned his first laugh when he shoved Mary off the stage.

“I didn’t really understand it and I wasn’t intending to play to the house,” he says. “I was just furious about how self-indulgent she was being.”

Early school reports tell of a boisterous boy. His headmistress wrote: “Ben is slightly more controlled but must try to be less noisy.”

From there he went on to a boarding school in Sussex, where the teachers urged him on to the stage, a ploy he believes was designed to quell his behaviour.

“It was almost like a control thing, to repress the tearaway in me,” says Benedict. “I was a hyper­active nightmare. I was pretty naughty, I got into fights.”

(Image: PA)

The naughtiness included flashing church congregations while playing with other children on holiday in Greece. Benedict confesses: “I used to expose myself in front of religious places. I was a very hot, bored boy and was surrounded by people who were older than me who were goading me.

“So when they got bored or the football went through a stain-glassed window — not to be returned — they’d always get me to do pranks. So one day they said, ‘Go on, go on, go on. Pull your pants down!’ Of course I did. I obliged willingly, no pun intended.”

Benedict’s parents made endless sacrifices to send their only son to prestigious boarding school Harrow.

But he is at pains to point out that he is not as posh as he sounds.

He says: “I was desperately proud of my parents for sending me to Harrow. It was a huge stretch for them and my grandmother paid two-thirds of my fee. They were working actors who never knew when the next pay day might come.

“There were those at Harrow who were super rich and went off on their holidays to Aspen, and I’d go and see my grandmother in Brighton.

“My parents wanted the best for me. I wasn’t sent to the school my dad went to. I’m not a hereditary peer.

“I wasn’t born into land or titles, or new money, or an oil rig.”

Concerned about being typecast, Benedict – who recently denounced “fat-faced, flatulent Cameron’s efforts at Toryism” – has tried to disguise his public school accent.

However he can’t disguise his fabulous talent or burgeoning success.

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Star Trek Into Darkness is out now