Top 45 Benedict Cumberbatch Quotes

I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.

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.

I’ll always do ‘Sherlock’ – it’s something I’m not going to give up on.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

I’m not confident in social situations; just going up to someone in a bar and saying ‘Hi’ is going to be even more difficult because they won’t know the real me. They will just know me as a fictional person I play on the screen.

If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people’s expectations, then you can go mad.

I want to be able to play trailer-bound fatties in a Judd Apatow comedy.

My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a ‘desert rats’ tank operator in the Second World War.

I had a real yearning to make use of the opportunities I had at school. When I heard about the gap year of teaching English at a Tibetan monastery, I knew I had to do something about it really quickly, otherwise it was going to get allocated.

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.

I had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor.

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.

When you see a good horseman, you’re unable to tell where the instruction is coming from. It’s like telepathy.

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!

I am a PR disaster because I talk too much.

People’s hands fascinate me. It’s tempting to look at a businessman’s left hand and see if there’s an indentation from a missing wedding ring. Or maybe there’s a tan line and the skin is pressed down where’s he’s worked a ring off his finger.

Maybe it’s because I was an only child, but I’ve always wanted kids.

Talking about class terrifies me. There is no way of winning.

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.

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’ 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.

I struggle to learn by rote. I’ve had meltdowns on set. Which is embarrassing and shameful.

Having your adolescence at an all-male boarding school is just crap.

The world of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.

I love doing impersonations of people.

I drag a lot of stuff round with me that I don’t need.

Mystique is rare now, isn’t it? There aren’t that many enigmas in this modern world.

I’ve always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.

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

There’s no shame in stealing – any actor who says he doesn’t is lying. You steal from everything.

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.

Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.

When are you ever settled enough to have kids?

I’ve realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.

If I’d had fame early on, I’d have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should.

It does get strange when you realize people will hang around for hours to get a glimpse of you doing scenes outside.

Lines are very difficult to learn.

I’m interested in art for all. I don’t want it to be only the sons and daughters of Tory MPs who get to see my plays.

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.

Every job is incredibly different, and I love it because you’re picking up skill sets and experiences. It’s the university of life.

I have an appetite for the normal in my life, as well as the abnormal.

When you freefall for 7,000 feet it doesn’t feel like you’re falling: it feels like you’re floating, a bit like scuba diving.

I wish my 15-year-old self had known about my allure to the opposite sex!

Someone will always hate what I say. There’s always going to be somebody spitting blood about my wooden-faced, toffee-named, crappy acting.

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.