‘Sherlock’ and ‘Star Trek’:

Benedict Cumberbatch lights it up

May 09, 2012 

“If he’s charismatic, it’s an accident of who he is,” Cumberbatch said. “He’s an odd entity. He’s sociopathic and there is a vicarious thrill you get watching someone who carves his way through bureaucracy and mediocrity like a hot knife through butter.”

The second season finds Holmes himself under the magnifying glass, Cumberbatch says.

“He’s a deconstructed and more vulnerable character who is easier to relate to and care about,” the 35-year-old actor said. “But it’s a slow learning curve. He’s still staggeringly smart, violent, physically capable, irreverent, comically rude — to idiots or anyone vaguely in his way — and dangerous.”

“I view it like any of the classical characters in the canon of Shakespeare or Chekhov, there will always be new interpretations,” Cumberbatch said. “I think Holmes is the fictional character who has been [in screen incarnations] the most. I’m 76th or something? People compare you to others and that’s fine, I can deal with that.”

Moffat says that Cumberbatch — whose mother and father put together long careers in television and onstage — was a star just waiting for a spotlight when he arrived at his “Sherlock” audition.

“He was already one of the most admired actors of his generation and, within the industry, universally tipped for stardom,” Moffat said. “We were the lucky ones who gave him the breakthrough part. The challenge of Sherlock Holmes is to play a show-off, self-obsessed egotist and yet still be loved, and actually very few people have pulled it off. I may be prejudiced, but I don’t think anyone has pulled it off as well as Benedict.”

Working with Freeman is a joy, Cumberbatch said, and that began with their “Sherlock” audition.

“I remember very clearly meeting for the first time because I auditioned with a number of actors – many fine actors among them — but he was the only one that raised my game,” Cumberbatch said of the Freeman, who may be stepping onto a career-defining platform with the Bilbo Baggins role.

Cumberbatch waxes on about the ambition and prowess of Hollywood crews and creators and peers and, with a sheepish grin, admitted working and playing hard in L.A.  have made him “tan and brain-dead.” The actor is clearly a deep thinker, though, he chases ideas down long, knotty trails of conversation, whether the topic is the California redwoods or the rainy-day genius of Thom Yorke.

– Geoff Boucher