Benedict Cumberbatch: “Shock invariably brings me new knowledge”

“No, he’s not just Ben. He is Big Ben,” I catch myself thinking, looking up at him. And then … His piercing eyes are such a British green-blue color. His deep masculine baritone, which became – so naturally – the voice of the dragon Smaug in the Hobbit epic. His incredibly correct – as if from a Shakespearean stage – speech. His thoughtful seriousness, oddly punctuated by such an open, such a hearty smile. His black scarf, his somewhat ridiculous black sweatshirt, his gray tweed trousers. And the place of our meeting is the democratic pub “At the Wells” in London’s Hampstead next to his apartment – the top two floors in a Victorian tenement house. Here, in these “Wells”, no one cares so much in London what kind of star sat down at the next massive table … As if Benedict Cumberbatch and everything that surrounds him is a sort of essence of Britishness, Englishness, Londonness. He carries it with him everywhere and spreads it with ether in the atmosphere. And I even begin to doubt: maybe Cumberbatch’s own merit is not so much in what he has become? And it’s all about the notorious “breed”? The temptation to think so is great, but such a question can even sound insulting. And I decide to go in from the flank. But Cumberbatch, with his sober self-esteem, as it turns out, is not fooled …

Psychologies: You so often play people with exceptional abilities – Holm, Assange in The Fifth Estate, now the great mathematician Turing in The Imitation Game … Why are you chosen for these roles, do you think?

Benedict Cumberbatch: Are you saying that nothing in me speaks of superpowers equal to the talents of these people?

I’m your fan. For me, it’s rather the opposite.

B.K.: And in vain. I am not equal to any of these people. These people are not equal. We are all special. The only question is how strong we are to manifest – like on film. I wasn’t weak, that’s all. I played on stage for ten years, I had roles on TV, I acted in films, I was noted by the British press and colleagues. But then – hop! And it turned out … You know, one witty reviewer formulated: I cumberbatch Britain. Well, then the world. This is indeed the right word: it was as if I did not exist, and I became. I was, but not quite, and then I became needed and appeared. I – out of my will – proved that I was needed. Proved without trying to prove anything. Maybe I’m an accident. I live with the feeling that this could not have happened, for some reason I was chosen, I need to continue to live, taking into account this circumstance. Nothing wrong. But also a little beautiful.

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Is it a little beautiful?

B.K.: Fees! But I’m not poor either. And I’m lucky among the actors – I always had a job, I rarely refused roles and projects. Because I don’t try on a role for myself – I always tried to play people who would be as far away from me as possible, who would be as little like me as possible. Holmes is a rare scoundrel. I’m not exactly like that. Assange is a dark horse even for those who know him. I am in full view. Romantic youths in telecinema in the early 2000s. And I’m more reliable than romantic. Etc. So even the proposals were not affected.

How did your sense of self and worldview change when it finally became clear that you had cumberbatched the world?

B.K.: You see, everyone is watching Holmes, and thank you for your attention. But now I often enter rooms where almost everyone knows me, but I don’t know anyone, and I still have to get to know everyone. There is a striking disparity. And although it’s simple for me: I’m not familiar – I’ll get acquainted – I won’t lie, the feeling is surreal. Either the Land Surveyor from Kafka’s “Castle”, or the heroine Japrizo, “ladies with glasses with a gun in a car.”

It’s still a detective…

B.K.: But I can forgive the comparison. In one detective I was even a victim. Now it’s easier to remember. But it shook me for a long time. Ten years have passed, and it’s still shaking … We were filming the mini-series “To the Earth” in Kenya. There were weekends. Me and three other filming colleagues went by car for a short trip. KwaZulu-Natal region, South Africa. To the right, something exploded. At that moment, I was singing in my headphones: “This is not happening, it cannot happen” … But it happened. The car overturned. Small squad. “Kalashnikovs”. They tied our hands with our own shoelaces and led us into the bush. I thought: they are unlikely to be killed, rather, they will be taken hostage. I wonder where they will keep – In the pit? But they stopped and with butts forced us to our knees. Then I thought: no, they will kill me. They were saying something to each other. We were on our knees with our hands tied behind our backs. A very long time. Clock. Although actually minutes. Then everything was quiet. We realized that they had left… We ran to some village… The next morning I went out to the balcony of the house where we were staying. The sun. Sun on the face. And the sea is in front of me. I thought: I can climb over the dune and swim. I can still… I’ve already died once before. After university, he worked in a Buddhist monastery, volunteering to teach English to little monks. We went to the mountains with friends on the weekend, but there was no money for a guide. The weather in the mountains changes rapidly, the sun and the blizzard are inches apart. In general, we got lost and almost disappeared. But they didn’t disappear. I remember that feeling—the absurdity of possible death and the inevitability of danger. But in the bush it was different – nothing ridiculous, someone else’s evil will, intention, and you are in his power … And when I was a teenager, half the ceiling in my room collapsed – then the Israeli embassy was blown up, this is next to my parents’ apartment in Kensington. I miraculously survived. But deaf for a while. And my mother, coming in and seeing all this chaos, asked: “Ben, how are you?” And I remember this strange feeling – I understand it, but on the lips, not as usual. Since then, shock has consistently brought me new knowledge. For example, what can I understand by lips. I can, yes… In general, all this is beautiful – fame, red carpets, fashion shoots for men’s magazines … All this is not necessary. Then, in the bush, it was a discovery: no matter how much you are loved, no matter who you are, you die alone.

Are people who have such a borderline experience like you different? Feel differently?

B.K.: I would say we tend to feel different. Don’t sweat over nonsense. Don’t waste your nerves on petty things. Feel your mortality always. Feel like a gift. Because if we lived forever, we could not feel life. And people like me do not exaggerate their importance to the world. Somewhere deep in you sits: why do I need glory if I have life? Just existing is exciting. Become a minimalist.

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Still, you have a reason to feel your own exclusivity – your experience and your stardom.

B.K.: Tell me again that I graduated from Harrow!

And what, and this too. Closed private schools form the elite not only of the country, but of the world.

B.K.: Okay, I have a sense of exclusivity. Because I’m extremely lucky. Lucky to live. Understand that fame is only one of the options for developing a professional career. I grew up in an acting family. I always knew what it is, the life of an actor: you play on stage, a lot and exhausting. Trying to get on TV. If you are very, very lucky, you will act in films. There will be a clear fee, most likely. But in fact, acting is a proletarian occupation. You are an employee. You may not be appreciated, and fired – removed from the performance, not taken into the project. I always knew from the inside what kind of profession it was. And what I experienced… The accents are shifting. You value more than yourself, the one you love, who is important to you. You know for sure how fragile he is. In 2005, when a bus and subway trains were blown up in London, I was on the bus. Promised a friend at the Old Vic to give a speaking class. The bus stopped. The driver announced that everything was blocked further, and why. The first one I thought of was Liv (Olivia Poulet is an actress, classmate of Cumberbatch at the University of Manchester. The couple had a serious relationship for 12 years. – Approx. ed.). I started calling her in a panic. But everyone called everyone, the lines were overloaded. Creepy feeling. It didn’t occur to me that I myself could be on that bus to Tavistock Square, but I could – that was my route. But I thought about Liv. And then I analyzed it and concluded: this is how I felt what I had to endure.

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But, sorry, I’ll still clarify about Harrow. Eton and Harrow are almost household names. One of the two main closed schools in Britain has defined something in your life, in you?

B.K.: In other words, am I a major? Kidding. It’s just that class feeling is very sharp in Britain. But seriously: of course, determined. But not at all that I became, so to speak, an elite. You see, I was the only child in the family. My half-sister, by mother, is 18 years older than me. Parents are actors, and very busy. Until the age of eight, I lived behind the scenes, among adults, I watched – from the back, from behind the scenes, performances with mom and dad. Or rehearsals from an empty hall. And here is the school! My childhood began – despite the discipline and the well-known drill of English closed schools. No parents! Few adults! All boys! As if he was in a large family, where all the brothers. This was great. I was always assigned to look after the little ones there. They trusted me. I was proud. And even then I told myself that I would definitely have children.

What about childhood without girls?

B.K.: This is a special relationship with girls. Like special beings. Don’t be embarrassed, you are truly special. When you don’t have fighting girlfriends-classmates… there is a younger friend of your mother, also an actress. You are 15, she is over 30. Your first and, of course, unrequited love. And, perhaps, the main woman of your life is already forever … And there are parents and their relationship. Mine had an amazing relationship – colleagues admiring each other. I have never seen anything like it among married couples. But my parents themselves … It was they who could have such a relationship, no one else! I have now begun to realize that much of what I do, I do because of them. I immediately agreed to voice the dragon in The Hobbit – because there is a scene in front of my eyes, as if it were yesterday: I’m at home on vacation, and my dad reads to me before bed. He played all the Tolkien roles like that! He had this Smaug! He played for me alone. But how! And mom – with her irony, sanity and some kind of organic romance at the same time. We have a rooftop apartment in Kensington. And she put the stroller with me, crying, on the roof so that I could see the sky. The sky, which soothes with its eternity, bottomlessness. The first thing I remember from childhood is the sky. And often, out of habit, I look at the sky, and not at my feet … And then I was 18 when I told her that I decided to become an actor after all. And she shrugged her shoulders and stated: “Another one decided to enter the cage with a predator.” And that’s all.

You said that as a child you decided: you will have children. But you are 38, you have no children yet, and you have just now decided to get married. Sorry, but why?

B.K.: You know what… About ten years ago, in an interview, I said like a fool: before the age of 40 I will have children. No one took it seriously, but I myself think: and why did I screw it up? Probably because, to a certain extent, I saw this as a goal. But the goal is limiting! The goal is freedom. And the world, in general, is freedom. And it has a lot of love. More than we used to think. It is not directed at anyone in particular. She is everywhere. Children are her beautiful, but special case …

(Here Cumberbatch pauses, sighs, looks at the grandiose green clock on the wall – it would be just like Big Ben.)

B.K.: Listen, I have to go – my nephew is having a bachelor party. I have a bike around the corner. I will take you where you need to go.

…I agree. I want to hug him. At least sitting in the back seat of his motorcycle.

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