Top 100 Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes
#1. If I'd had fame early on, I'd have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#2. Look at you lot, you're all so vacant, is it nice not being me it must be so relaxing.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#3. I think with any characterization there's a point where you empathize, no matter how much of a deviance his or her actions may be from your understanding of humanity.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#5. There are moments when, like all of us, you get a bit self-conscious and you'd rather not be living any of your day in public. Those are the awkward times, but you've got to have fun with it.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#6. [While voicing cartoons] you have to lose your sanity and inhibitions and any kind of dignity and just throw yourself around a bit.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#9. Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#10. I've turned up to costume parties in the wrong costume. I've made social faux pas a plenty. I've put one foot in front of the other and fallen over.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#11. If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people's expectations, then you can go mad.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#12. My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a 'desert rats' tank operator in the Second World War.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#13. I was the boy that turned a girlfriend into the most celebrated lesbian on television. I got so much stick for that.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#14. I don't live beyond my means. I enjoy luxury and I enjoy the privilege of it, when I can afford it, and I'm in the situation where it's been given to me, but I'm very conscious of what is wasteful.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#16. Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#17. If I'm playing someone who's smart, suddenly every character I've played is smart. If I'm playing a bad guy, every character is a bad guy. I suppose it's that thing where people want to see a through-line to understand you. I mean, you know, I have played pretty ordinary people too.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#18. I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#20. I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#21. I've been broody since I was 12, but I can't just get anyone pregnant. It has got to be the right person.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#22. The world of 'Sherlock Holmes' and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#24. I just increasingly enjoy the quiet moments when I can be on my own with my friends and family, or with a book, having a live experience. That's really what I crave, and I always have done.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#25. I want to do it all. I want to climb mountains, go through jungles, fight wars in space, get the girl, shoot the bad-guy full of lead, have all the zippy one liners, bulge muscles out of a singlet, drip sweat and blood on screen, all of that.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#26. I was thrilled with how the first series of 'Sherlock' was received. It was such great fun to film, which makes it so rewarding when something you enjoy is so well received.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#27. I struggle to learn by rote. I've had meltdowns on set. Which is embarrassing and shameful.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#28. Cumberbatch - it sounds like a fart in a bath, doesn't it? What a fluffy old name. I can never say it on a Monday morning. When I became an actor, Mum wasn't keen on me keeping it.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#31. I never was obsessive about anything I watched when I was a kid, except maybe 'The A-Team' and 'Airwolf' ... And I loved 'Knight Rider' and then later 'Baywatch.'
Benedict Cumberbatch
#32. There's so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#33. I just want to bring people in a little bit to the idea of sitting down on a Sunday three consecutive weeks and having that water cooler moment that really was a sort of a national sensation in the U.K., 'cause it's kind of fun.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#34. What a tragic waste o engagement (selfies). Enjoy the moment. Do something more worthwhile with your time, anything. Stare out the window and think about life.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#35. You come into this world as you leave it, on your own. It's made me want to live a life slightly less ordinary.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#36. It does get strange when you realize people will hang around for hours to get a glimpse of you doing scenes outside.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#37. Every job is incredibly different, and I love it because you're picking up skill sets and experiences. It's the university of life.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#39. I ate healthily, but there was no snacking, no drinking, no bread, no sugar, no smoking. Afterwards I had a pork belly roast.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#40. I play enough other mad people, as well and some sane people, to vary the palette of what's scrabbling around in my head and soul to bring to the floor, as a storyteller.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#42. Any irrational fears?no, i'm quite a rationalist. i'm not superstitious, i think life is too full of natural wonders and logical complexities to worry about illogical things.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#43. I suppose my bodily proportions are quite flattering. I'm ripped, doing something I wouldn't normally do with my body, or having done to it, involving Watson,
Benedict Cumberbatch
#44. I'm not an overnight success. I've been doing it for 12 years. It's been lovely and varied so far.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#45. We're living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#46. 'Sherlock' fans are, by and large, an intelligent breed, so they've gone through my back catalogue and got what I've done, why and how I've done it. There is some obsessive behaviour, but I worry for them rather than me.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#48. There's still nearly the same amount of slavery, if not more, in the world today, as there was at the height of the slave trade.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#49. I haven't done period dramas back-to-back, or really anything back-to-back. You get asked to do what you're most recently famed for, so I'm careful of not repeating myself.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#51. I was always performing, doing silly voices. The teachers realized I could go one of two ways: be creative or destructive.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#53. One of the fears of having too much work is not having time to observe. And once you get recognised, there is nowhere for you to look any more. You can't sit on a night bus and watch it all happen.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#55. I got live tweeted once by someone who was opposite my home in some rented accommodation. He was actually describing on twitter what I was doing. 'I took a shirt off, I went to the window, I put a shirt back on ... ' And I've got blinds in my flat!
Benedict Cumberbatch
#56. There's no shame in stealing - any actor who says he doesn't is lying. You steal from everything.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#58. I like to think that we're revolving on this planet and revolving through the galaxy. I love having context that's so much bigger than I can fathom. It's fantastic to realise how insignificant you are.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#59. I thought, well, why am I giving up on my primary dream to work doubly hard, to do something as an alternative to what it really still want to?
Benedict Cumberbatch
#60. I always get self-conscious about what I look like in a film, but less so if I'm a character very far removed from who I am. Then I just worry about the performance, and that's equally an odd experience.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#61. 'Benedict' means 'blessed.' My parents liked the sound of the name and felt slightly blessed because they'd been trying for a child for a very long time.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#62. It's great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I'm enjoying.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#64. Do awards change careers? Well, I haven't heard of many stories where that's the case. It's a fun excuse to meet colleagues and celebrate people who've done well that year in certain people's eyes, and it's nothing more than that.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#66. New York City is crazy and beautiful and really close to my heart, and I've always had dear friends here - family, actually, I would say.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#67. I can't stop traffic on Fifth Avenue, not unless I walk in front of an oncoming cab.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#68. I try to work hard. I'm really proud of what I get to do as a living. I still pinch myself. But I also know it's a craft, and I can get better at it and learn every time I do it. So I try to work hard no matter what the task is.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#70. I love theatre, and you learn too much as an actor and enjoy too much of it not to want to go back a lot.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#71. The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#74. When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don't really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it's not fair that others aren't doing exactly what you're doing. I do have that.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#75. The number of people my age, younger now, a whole generation younger, who are fiercely bright, over-educated, under-employed and who are politicised and purposeless really upsets me. It's soul-destroying.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#76. I've been quite a late developer on the clothes front, but I've suddenly realised it is one of life's joys.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#78. You have to sometimes just run with the problem rather than trying to solve it with hi-tech wizardry and lots of planning.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#79. I was happy as an only child, but I've always wanted to be part of a bigger family.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#80. I actually do mind having a photo taken because it's one o'clock in the morning and I'm off my face.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#81. Someone will always hate what I say. There's always going to be somebody spitting blood about my wooden-faced, toffee-named, crappy acting.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#82. I've been reading the books. It's the origination, it's the primary source. You should always go back to the books.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#83. When you see a good horseman, you're unable to tell where the instruction is coming from. It's like telepathy.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#84. Animations are really powerful - it's not just entertainment, it's a very cunning way to get good ideas across.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#85. I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#86. I remember very clearly someone saying, 'Don't shake hands with the cactus,' and I thought, 'Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?' Shaking hands is a friendly gesture.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#87. Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#88. There's a huge raft of roles that actors in our culture perform, and you can see any one of about three Hamlets in a year. It's not something to be completely daunted by.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#89. I'm always playing characters with intellects profoundly superior to mine. That's great fun, even though it's as much a fantasy for me as for the people watching me.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#90. I am very flattered. I have also become a verb as in "I have cumberbatched the UK audience" apparently. Who knows, by the end of the year I might become a swear word too! It's crazy and fun and very flattering.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#92. Metaphorically speaking, it's easy to bump into one another on the journey from A to B and not even notice. People should take time to notice, enjoy and help each other.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#94. The more charming person is the person who admits the other person is more charming.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#95. I've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#96. It's difficult because nothing's preordained by plan and you can't control it. That's one of those joys and thrills and nerve-racking realities of being an actor. A lot has to do with luck, no matter what your talent or contribution can be.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#97. Conan Doyle is amazing in the way he has Watson describe Sherlock's posture, mood swings, his hand gestures, and so forth in the novels.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#99. To get a horse to hit a mark without a rider, to get it to stand up, to get it to rear, to get it to pick up a bucket and bring it over is amazing. It's hard work and very rewarding but can be dangerous.
Benedict Cumberbatch
#100. My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan's 'The Browning Version,' where my job was to make school-masters' wives weep with recognition.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
