Best 223 quotes of Benedict Cumberbatch on MyQuotes

I'd shift disciplines, whether it was musical instruments or sports or whatever, and it's the same with that.

I feel like I'm away for much of my own life.

I feel that TV and film feed off each other well. It's more in the perception of the viewer than it is of the actor.

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

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.

If people ask, 'Are you Sherlock Holmes?', it's horribly naff, but I say, 'I'm not, I just look a bit like him' - which is how I feel. There are bad attributes of his that I really don't share!

If you can't fail, you can never get better.

If you can't jump on board when the ride's going past that's it, it usually goes by, so the hugest compliment they paid me was to come back to me. It motivated me to try to fulfill their faith.

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

I genuinely don't know Julian Assange well. To authenticate an opinion, I really would have to meet him.

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 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.

I had a very sparse comic upbringing - not because I was being whipped into reading Chekhov and Dickens, but I read Asterix on holidays when I was a kid, and Tin Tin was featured, I remember, for a few years.

I had parents who were working actors, who did really well in their careers, but it was a living. So it was a reality for me growing up; it wasn't a fantasy. It wasn't sitting there going, "I want to be adored." It wasn't that at all. Not to say that the screams of fans aren't a smile-raiser, but that was never the pull for me.

I had to imagine myself into certain aspects of [Julian Assange] character for our version of events. That involved extrapolating based on clues in his biography, his public persona, photographs, and other accounts of him by people who encountered him during that extraordinary period from 2007 to 2010 that we charted in the film [The Fifth Estate]. So, it involved a lot of research but, sadly, no contact with the man himself.

I had to kiss it [ playing Hamlet] goodbye because Marvel have to plot things for the next three, four years.

I have memories of clouds whisking by while sitting in the pushchair on the roof of my parents' flat. I loved it! I just loved staring at the clouds and dreaming away.

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 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.

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.

I know he [Julian Assange] is a man of fierce determination, and now living under the strain of house arrest in the Ecuadorean embassy as a "political exile," as he calls himself.

I know that might sound perverse because I played Julian Assange but, honestly, I don't think it would be fair for me to judge the man. I realize that makes me a bit of a hypocrite because I was portraying him a certain way, but we were always open to the fact that this was an interpretation, not any kind of exact evidence of who the man was.

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.

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.

I love the idea of playing something stupid or romantic. I'm not the smartest man in the room. I listen, and I learn, and I observe, but 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.

I'm a high-functioning sociopath, do your research.

I'm always keen to use my body in my work, so I'm looking forward to the motion capture for Smaug. Both Gollum and King Kong were primates, whereas I'm playing a serpent, so it'll be interesting - I'll have to tie my legs together, possibly, or else they'll be kind of splayed out to the side as a reptile's should be.

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.

I'm aware of [Doctor Strange] place within the comic pantheon of it all, the Marvelverse, but I don't email saying, "When are we doing next film?" I'm excited to see.

I'm aware of the power of looks. I've wanted to play roles that have gone to much better-looking people and you just think 'Oh well, that's the pin up guy's an actor like my friend James Mcavoy, who's gorgeous on screen. I'm not that. But at least I don't have to worry about taking precious care of my face because it's my commodity. That's a great freedom. I'm not afraid of being heinous for the sake of a part

I'm not an overnight success. I've been doing it for 12 years. It's been lovely and varied so far.

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.

I'm not one for doing the children's party version: "Hi, I'm a character in a movie and now I'm in reality!" I was doing the last shot of the film before reshoots outside their shop. I was starting my run into the frame and I thought, "You are literally ending where this began. The loop of serendipity's too much to not go in and acknowledge it." I just wanted to see the look on their faces.

I'm not very geeky. I'm quite homespun. I would say I'm more modern rustic than gadget-orientated. I like woollen things and log fires and whiskey

I'm quite sensitive to people noticing me. There are times when I'm relaxed, then others when it does make me self-conscious.

I'm really not Sherlock Holmes. I look a little bit like him and sound like him.

I'm sad in a way that the character [Doctor Strange ] leaves [neurosurgery] behind. It's an amazing discipline.

I'm sort of focused on my long-term goal of carving out a career that's for life, rather than being a flash in the pan.

I'm still very sensitive and wary of people recognising me The only thing that really annoys me is people trying to surreptitiously take a photo on their phone without asking. I feel it's cowardly and a bit pathetic. Just ask me if you really want me to have a photograph with you.

I’m very excited about all the offers and interest and support pouring in through crowd-funding, and about having a lovely gap coming up when I’ll finally be able to sit down with books and scripts and talk to my partners about how we take the company forward.

I never really got obsessed about one thing for long. I was a bit of a butterfly and a magpie.

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.'

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.

I really cannot get over the generosity of our Tibetian teacher. He said, "Don't punish yourself. You're going to be a student at a university in the north of England. You need to have your experiences and have your fun, and not judge yourself. Don't live in guilt and regret.

I really discovered [Dr.Strange] through hearing about this film and first meeting Scott [Derrickson] and getting into it and just opening up and saying, "Okay, this is, like all comics, very much of its era," and my first question was, 'How do you make this film? Why do you make this film now?' and the answers were so enticing that I was like, "I'm in.

I still find to give an interview to be difficult, as any person who deals with the press will tell you. That's why it's nice, with this one, to talk to a friend. But sometimes with a coffee and a friendly smile, I suddenly start talking without thinking about how it's going to be read.

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

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.

It'd be really nice to wake up looking like, I don't know, Jake Gyllenhaal and think "Let's try this on for a day and see how it feels.

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