BENEDICT TIMOTHY CARLTON

CUMBERBATCH

Early life

Cumberbatch was born on 19 July 1976 at Queen Charlotte's Hospital in Hammersmith, London, to actors Timothy Carlton (real name Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch) and Wanda Ventham.He grew up in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. His great-grandfather, Henry Arnold Cumberbatch CMG, was the consul general of Queen Victoria in Turkey. His grandfather, Henry Carlton Cumberbatch, was a decorated submarine officer of both World Wars and a prominent figure of London high society.Cumberbatch started attending boarding schools when he was eight.

He was also part of the rugby team, and painted oil canvasses while at Harrow.After graduating at Harrow, he took a gap year to volunteer as an English teacher at a Tibetan monastery in Darjeeling, India. He then attended the University of Manchester, where he studied drama. After graduating, he continued his training as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art(19 July 1976) is an English film, television, theatre and voice actor.

Cumberbatch's first West End theatre performance was for Sir Richard Eyre's revival of Hedda Gabler as George Tesman in 2005. Since then, he has led Royal National Theatreproductions After the Dance (2010) and Danny Boyle's Frankenstein (2011). His first starring role on television was as the title character in Hawking in 2004. He has portrayed Sherlock Holmes in the television series Sherlock since 2010 and has led the ensemble cast of Sir Tom Stoppard's adaptation of Parade's End in 2012. His first major film role was William Pitt the Younger in Amazing Grace in 2006. He has also appeared in the films Atonement (2007), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011), and Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011). Since 2012, he hasportrayed the characters of Smaug and the Necromancer through voice and motion capture in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy. In 2013, he starred in films Star Trek Into Darkness, 12 Years a Slave, The Fifth Estate, and August: Osage County.

Career

Theatre

Since 2001, Cumberbatch has had major roles in a dozen classic plays at the Regent's Park Open Air, Almeida, Royal Court and Royal National Theatres. He was nominated for an Olivier Award for Best Performance in a Supporting Role for his performance as Tesman in Hedda Gabler, a role he performed at the Almeida Theatre on 16 March 2005, as well as at the Duke of York's Theatre when it transferred to the West End on 19 May 2005. This transfer marked his first West End appearance.

In June 2010, he led the revival of Terence Rattigan's After the Dance directed by Thea Sharrock at the Royal National Theatre. He played 1920s aristocrat David Scott-Fowler to commercial and critical success. The play eventually won four Olivier Awards including Best Revival.

Cumberbatch acted in Danny Boyle's The Children's Monologues, a theatrical charity event at London's Old Vic Theatre on 14 November 2010. The show was produced by Dramatic Need.

In February 2011, he began playing, on alternate nights, both Victor Frankenstein and his creature, opposite Jonny Lee Miller, in Danny Boyle's stage production of Mary Shelley's Frankensteinat the Royal National Theatre.Frankenstein was broadcast to cinemas as a part of National Theatre Live in March 2011.Cumberbatch achieved the "Triple Crown of London Theatre" in 2011 when he was awarded the Olivier Award, Evening Standard Award and Critics' Circle Theatre Award for his performance in Frankenstein

Television

Cumberbatch's television roles include two separate guest roles in Heartbeat (2000, 2004), Freddy in Tipping the Velvet (2002), Edward Hand in Cambridge Spies (2003) and Rory in the ITV comedy drama series Fortysomething (2003). He was also featured in Spooks and Silent Witness. In 2004, he starred as Stephen Hawking in Hawking. He was nominated for the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor and won the Golden Nymph for Television Films – Best Performance by an Actor. He later provided Hawking's voice in the first episode of the television series Curiosity. He appeared in the BBC miniseries Dunkirk as Lieutenant Jimmy Langley.

In 2005, Cumberbatch starred as the protagonist Edmund Talbot in the miniseries To the Ends of the Earth, based on William Golding's trilogy; during filming he experienced a terrifying carjacking in South Africa, managing to escape.He made brief appearances in the comedy sketch show Broken News in 2005. He next starred alongside Tom Hardy in the television adaptation of Stuart: A Life Backwards, which aired on the BBC in September 2007.

Film

In 2006, Cumberbatch played William Pitt the Younger in Amazing Grace. The role garnered Cumberbatch a nomination for the London Film Critics Circle British Breakthrough Acting Award. Cumberbatch subsequently appeared in supporting roles in Atonement (2007) and The Other Boleyn Girl (2008). In 2009, he appeared in the Darwin biographical film Creation as Darwin's friend Joseph Hooker. In 2010, he appeared in The Whistleblower. He played Peter Guillam, George Smiley's right-hand man, in the 2011 adaptation of the John le Carré novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The film was directed by Tomas Alfredson and starred Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. Cumberbatch played Major Jamie Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse in 2011.

In 2012, he provided the voice and motion-capture for both Smaug the Dragon and the Necromancer in An Unexpected Journey, the first installment of The Hobbit film series based on the 1937novel by J. R. R. Tolkien.In December 2013, he reprised his role as Smaug and The Necromancer for The Desolation of Smaug and will again for the final film of the series in There and Back Again in 2014. For the motion-capture aspect of the films, he had to use a suit and facial markers to obtain the dragon's expressions and movements. Cumberbatch told Total Film"You just have to lose your shit on a carpeted floor, in a place that looks a little bit like a mundane government building. It was just me as well, with four static cameras and all the sensors."

In 2013, Cumberbatch also appeared in J. J. Abrams's sequel Star Trek Into Darkness as Khan, the antagonist of the film.Three of the four films he starred in during the second half of 2013 premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival: The Fifth Estate, where he played Wiki Leaks founder Julian Assange, 12 Years a Slave, where he played William Prince Ford, a slave owner, and August: Osage County, playing Charles Aiken. For the film, he recorded a song titled "Can't Keep it Inside" for the official soundtrack.

In January 2014, Gary Oldman confirmed that Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes and Amanda Seyfried are on board to star in his next directorial project, Flying Horse, about the life of English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Cumberbatch has also signed up for a voice role in DreamWorks Animation's feature film Penguins of Madagascar, which is set for release in March 2015.[57] He will be seen in the upcoming historical drama film The Imitation Game as British cryptographer Alan Turing, set for release on 2014.

In September 2013, he replaced Brad Pitt as the lead in Paramount Pictures and Plan B Entertainment's adaptation of the best-selling book The Lost City of Z about the South American explorer Percy Fawcett. The film will be directed by James Gray and is set to shoot in the summer of 2014. He signed up for new thriller Blood Mountain, directed by Sergei Bodrov. Principal photography is set to begin in April 2014 in Morocco.