In the movies, he often plays geniuses, but asks to keep in mind that he himself does not have any superpowers. He considers himself a completely ordinary person, but it is not easy to agree with this. And even more — it is impossible to agree with this.
It’s so bright, so joyful here — in a Jewish restaurant not far from Hampstead Heath in a residential, somewhat philistine, bourgeois-prosperous Hampstead in north London. Blue walls, a gilded chandelier, chairs upholstered in bright blue with flowers and branches … And almost no one at this hour between lunch and what the British call dinner.
Yes, neither the three customers nor the slightly sleepy waiters, contrary to my expectations, pay any attention to us. But, as it turns out, they are indifferent not at all because my interlocutor in gray trousers, a gray sweatshirt, with a gray scarf around his neck, tied with an ascetic noose, is trying to be invisible. But because he’s a «daytime regular» here.
Benedict Cumberbatch, it turns out, constantly makes appointments at this restaurant, because he lives a ten-minute walk away, “and you can’t invite home — there are children’s screams, screams, games, tears, persuasion to eat a little more of this, not to eat too much of that … or vice versa — not just a quiet, but a dead hour. And here you can come almost in slippers and immediately after the conversation return to our community of older and younger, where it is not clear who is educating whom … and where I strive to get from everywhere, wherever I am.
It is so strange for me to hear this last phrase from him — a frequenter not only of restaurants open during the day, but also of red carpets, press conferences, official and charitable events, where he invariably shows himself to be a genius of communication and a master of small talk. And from a man who once admitted that … Well, yes, I will immediately ask him about this.
Psychologies: Ben, I’m sorry, but it’s strange to hear about the desire to go home from a man who once said that in his youth, his main fear was to live an ordinary, unremarkable life. And here you are — a family, children, a house in Hampstead … the most cloudless ordinary. But what about the profession, career, fame — are these concepts devalued in your eyes?
Benedict Cumberbatch: I don’t know if you are trolling me … But I answer seriously. Now that I’m well into my forties, I’ve realized something that seems pretty simple. Life is the way. That is, not a process that is happening to us. This is our path, the choice of route. The destination — the one other than the grave — is not very clear. But each next stop, so to speak, a halt, is more or less clear. Sometimes not to ourselves. But in the atmosphere you can already feel the wind from there …
You know, of course, that my parents are actors. And fully aware of how unstable acting life is, sometimes humiliating, always dependent, they tensed, and very seriously, that I get the best education possible. And mobilized all their financial resources to send me to the world’s premier boys’ school, Harrow School.
They hoped that with the prospects that Harrow gives, I could become a doctor, an astrophysicist, a lawyer, after all. And I will find a stable, cloudless future. But before school and on holidays, I often came to the theater, to my mother’s or father’s performances. And so I remember…
I am 11 years old, I stand behind the stage and look at the actors, at the darkness, which for me is instead of the auditorium … Mom’s exit, she is in a circle of light, her comical gestures, laughter in the hall … And I feel like from that darkness where the audience , heat comes out. Well, I literally feel it!
Mom comes back offstage, sees me and, probably, a special expression on my face and quietly says: “Oh no, one more …” She realized that I was gone. And so, when, after Harrow, I announced that I still wanted to become an actor, which meant in practice “to hell with your efforts and your education,” my parents only sighed heavily …
That is, I programmed this acting future in myself — there, behind the scenes at my mother’s performance. And my next … «halt» was to be the stage, perhaps, if I was lucky, the screen. Not right away, but it worked. And after all these roles, the enchanting and completely unexpected success of Sherlock for me, I felt that I was missing …
And it is very necessary — inner discipline, concentration of thought, a true, clear vision of things. Rooted in reality. Her calm acceptance. And this is more valuable than professional success, I assure you. Living the most ordinary life turned out to be more important than a career.
But you spoke about the desire to live an extraordinary life after a special experience, an incident in South Africa …
… Yes, in existentialism it would be called borderline. I was heading to the shooting with two friends, the car had a flat tire. Six guys with machine guns drove up to us, pushed me and my friends into the car, drove me into the forest, put me on my knees — and we already said goodbye to life, and they, having taken away our credit cards and cash, just disappeared …
It was then that I decided that you die alone, just like you were born, there is no one to rely on and you need to live to the fullest, yes … But one day you feel that living to the fullest is what it is: my hometown, a quiet area, a children’s with a big window and you change a diaper. This is life in full force, measured by the largest measure.
Therefore, let’s say, this covid quarantine did not deprive me of balance, but many complained. Our whole family — me, children, my parents and wife — we were stuck in New Zealand, where I was filming at the time. We spent two months there and did not notice the quarantine. I learned to play the banjo and bake bread. We picked mushrooms in the mountains and read aloud to the children. I would say it was even quite hectic. And you know, it looks like a kind of meditation — when you are, as it were, outside your usual thoughts, where it is cleaner and calmer.
You’ve said the word «calm» twice in the last five minutes…
Yes, he may have spoken. I really lacked this — inner peace. The best advice I have ever received in my life was given to me by a very elderly colleague 20 years ago. I was in drama school at the time. After some general rehearsal, he said, “Ben, don’t worry. Be afraid, beware, beware. But don’t worry. Don’t let the excitement bring you down.»
And I really was very worried: did I decide to become an actor just because I more or less imagined this business? After all, I was going to go to Harrow to become a lawyer, but at some point I clearly realized that I was simply not smart enough for this. Then it became clear that I was right — I know lawyers, some of them are my classmates, they are extremely smart, and I’m not so …
But then I wasn’t okay at all. And he was not sure of anything — neither in himself, nor in the fact that he had done the right thing … That advice was very helpful. But by and large, I stopped worrying only when Sophie and I got together and Keith was born (Christopher is the eldest son of the actor, was born in 2015. — Approx. ed.).
Are you one of those who believe that with the birth of children completely changed?
Yes and no. I’m still the same. But I remembered myself as a child — what a fantastic, completely new sense of independence I experienced when my sister and parents gave me the first adult bike! I think it’s important to remember being the boy who enjoyed riding the bike because of a new sense of independence in order to be a good father. And the responsibility is kind of sobering, you know. Think less about yourself.
Over time, I became more patient, I only worry about specific reasons.
In addition, I began to fully understand my parents. For example, the fact that dad in my childhood retired to the bathroom with a newspaper. I sat on the edge of the bath and read. And dealt with taxes in the same place on the sink. Yes, dad, I finally understand you. Sometimes it is very necessary that the children were not around. But more often it is necessary that they be in sight. This is the best anchor in our voyage.
Do you have any own discoveries in the field of education?
These are the methods of my parents. I am a child of mature people — my mother was 41 years old when I was born, Tracy, a sister from my mother’s first marriage, is 15 years older than me. And yet my parents always treated me as an equal. That is, they communicated with the child as with a child, but I do not remember the turning point when they spoke to me as an adult.
None of my decisions were perceived as wrong, but only as … mine, for which I myself will be responsible. And it is rather the children who bring me up than I do them! I have become more patient, I only worry about specific things. And — as they grow up — I realize that I can not be responsible for everything.
Now I remember one wonderful person, a monk in Kathmandu… After Harrow, I decided to take a break before the university and went to Nepal as a volunteer to teach English to little monks. And then he remained a kind of student in one monastery — for a couple of months. Restraint, lessons of silence, many hours of meditation. And there, one bright man once told us: do not blame yourself too often.
And you are a Buddhist, because Buddhism is morally more flexible than Christianity?
But the truth is you can not be responsible for everything and everyone! Do what you can and don’t blame yourself. Because it is a kind of pride to hold yourself responsible in situations where you may actually be powerless. It is really important to know the limits of your responsibility and, if anything, your guilt.
In general, to know the border, to be able to stop something in time. So I did a lot of things in my life — on stage, in the cinema — so that my parents would be proud of me. But at some point I said to myself: stop. I love them very much, I am very grateful to them, but you cannot orient your life according to them. You need to be able to stop in time — to do something, to feel something. Just move on to the next stage, do not get stuck in what is no longer your size, tight, too tight.
This is the most unmistakable trigger — when your sense of justice rises
By the way, in the same place, in Nepal, my friend and I went on a hike, got lost, two days later in the Himalayas — lo and behold! — they saw the dung of a yak and followed the trail of the wagon to the village. With gestures, they showed that they were brutally hungry, and received the most delicious food in the world — eggs. I immediately got diarrhea, of course. And a friend joked gloomily: our salvation had quite prosaic consequences.
And he was right: in life, miracles and … well, shit go hand in hand. Not necessarily the second — retribution for the first. Just hand in hand. Joys and nastiness. This is all also about the issue of peace and my Buddhism.
How has having a family affected your work? Did you have to rethink anything?
I’m not sure that before the birth of children, before I had to find a balance between home life and work, I would have advocated for equal pay for men and women in film and theater so seriously. And now I refuse the project if I am not guaranteed that the «male» and «female» rates in it are equal.
I am, after all, a quite limited, never particularly needy, middle-aged white male. It’s not a fact that it would have touched me so much if I didn’t understand in practice what kind of fate it is to be a working mother.
It is also curious that, having become a father, I look at the roles themselves in a new way. I played Hamlet at the Barbican when Keith was a year old. And he looked at Hamlet not at all in the same way as before — as at a person facing an existential choice. “To be or not to be”… No, I saw in him a son, an orphan, a boy who considers his mother a traitor because she betrayed the memory of his father.
And he is all — youthful rage, a thirst to prove to his mother how wrong she is. He is completely a son — not a bright personality, not Ophelia’s lover or seducer, he is a teenager who felt his orphanhood. And seeks revenge on adults. Bring justice back to Elsinore as he sees it.
I don’t even rule out that my speech after one of the performances was in defense of refugees from Syria, against politicians with their absurd decision to admit only 20 thousand in Britain in 5 years, while only 5 thousand arrived in Lampedusa and Lesvos every day … Perhaps , this speech was also partly dictated by Hamlet’s desire for justice … The last words addressed to politicians — for sure.
Do you regret that speech, the cursing of the British political elite? In the end, because then you were even accused of hypocrisy.
Oh yes: «The star with millions sympathizes with the refugees, he himself will not let them into his house.» And no, I don’t regret it. In my opinion, this is the most unmistakable trigger — when your sense of justice rises. Then, like many others, I was simply turned over by a photo in the newspapers: the body of a two-year-old baby on the surf line. He was a refugee from war-torn Syria, he drowned in the Mediterranean Sea. The kid died because he fled from the war.
I urgently needed to address the audience right from the stage, right after the performance, on my bows. And with something that contained the same feeling that I experienced — a mixture of bitterness and anger. These were the poems of a poet from Nigeria: “There is no place for a child in a boat until the sea is calmer than the land …”
Until now, the decision to restrict entry for refugees seems wild to me. My task was to raise funds for them. And the campaign was successful. This is the main thing. Yes, I generally forgot how to regret what was done. I’m not up to it. I have children.