Benedict Cumberbatch Profile, Age, Net Worth, Family, Biography & More

Benedict Cumberbatch CBE is an English actor. Known for his work on screen and stage, he has received various accolades, including a British Academy Television Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurence Olivier Award. He has also been nominated for two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2015, he was appointed a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to the performing arts and to charity.

Cumberbatch studied drama at the Victoria University of Manchester and obtained a Master of Arts in classical acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He began acting in Shakespearean theater productions before making his West End debut in Richard Eyre’s revival of Hedda Gabler in 2005. Since then, he has starred in Royal National Theater productions of After the Dance (2010) and Frankenstein (2011), winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for the latter. In 2015, he played the title role in Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre.

Cumberbatch’s television work includes his performance as Stephen Hawking in the television film Hawking (2004). He gained greater recognition for playing Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series Sherlock from 2010 to 2017, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. For playing the title role in the miniseries Patrick Melrose (2018), he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor.

In films, Cumberbatch has played Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and has appeared in the historical dramas Amazing Grace (2006), 12 Years a Slave (2013), 1917 (2019) and The Courier (2020). He received critical acclaim and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performances as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014) and as a volatile rancher in The Power of the Dog (2021). From 2012 to 2014, through voice and motion capture, Cumberbatch played Smaug and Sauron in The Hobbit film series. Since 2016, he has played Dr. Stephen Strange in six films set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, starting with Doctor Strange (2016) and most recently appeared in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022).

While in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, in 2005, Cumberbatch and two friends were abducted, after bursting a tire, and held at gunpoint by a group of locals. Eventually their abductors drove them into unsettled territory and set them free without explanation. Cumberbatch said of the incident: “It taught me that you come into this world as you leave it, on your own. It’s made me want to live a life less ordinary.” Before the burst tire, they had been listening to “How to Disappear Completely” by Radiohead. Following this experience, whenever Cumberbatch hears the song it “reminds [him] of a sense of reality … [and] a reason for hope”.

He subscribes to Buddhist philosophy and has expressed affinity for meditation and mindfulness. Cumberbatch also follows a vegan diet.

Cumberbatch was in a twelve-year-long relationship with actress Olivia Poulet, from his time at Manchester University until 2010.

Cumberbatch is married to English theater and opera director Sophie Hunter. Their engagement was announced in the “Forthcoming Marriages” section of The Times on 5 November 2014, after a seventeen-year friendship.On 14 February 2015, the couple married at the 12th-century Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Mottistone on the Isle of Wight followed by a reception at Mottistone Manor. They have three sounds.