Benedict Cumberbatch

"I don’t know if watching your own work is a good or bad thing. I don’t know how much I learn from it. Each individual circumstance holds its own world of singularities and peculiarities. But among that, you can go: “Oh yeah, I remember that was what I tried to do.” Sometimes it doesn’t fit with the cast or the energy of the scene or the beat of another character. But to sit down in the audience and go: “Oh my God, I think that was what I intended”, was great."

"I was very, very into techno for a long time. That was my bag at uni. I went clubbing a lot and all sorts of nonsense ensued. Havok on a Friday was my favourite night because I just loved dancing."

"It's time to start playing the smallest violin in the world for me right now. I was very lucky because I had other people's pets. I was like an uncle or godparent. You get all the benefits without any of the trauma. We had animals at school that we tended to, I don't know how they survived. I didn't go through the trauma of seeing them as babies and then going through their life cycle with them and the inevitable end. I love, love, love, love, love dogs. Cats, on the other hand... Don't ever do a film with them. They just wander around looking really unimpressed with everything. I love them, but working with them is really tough."

"You know, I’m not a fan of horror. I’m a fan of some of those films, but I’m not a fan in the sense I find it very difficult to watch them. I’m very suggestible and gullible and I buy into what I’m watching and it just haunts me for too long afterwards. It just scares me for longer than the moment in the film. I don’t really like living a life in horror or terrors, other than that in the real world without my imagination creating more. Horror is not my genre go-to. It’s not my genre go to."

"I would say in compound sense of what little I know is it’s definitely darker in tone, and in terms of advice for taking kids of a certain age, it’s going to be prohibitive for certain people of a certain age because it is scary."

"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."

"Situations where what I say echoes much further than what is healthy. I would love to just have the work do the talking. We’re in positions where people ask us questions; they want to know about more than just the work. And it can go into areas where I’ve completely shot my mouth off, whether it’s too much about my private life or being too opinionated about things in the world. I think the better thing to do—I’ve learned this from people far wiser than me—is to do very good, quiet work behind closed doors."

"Everything flat lines in my brain, to be honest. I don’t think much at all. I just sit there going, “Holy s**t!” It’s very rare that you stop to look back. What I’m trying to do, all the time, whatever I’m doing, is being in that present moment. I seem to have an appetite for life and I seem to have an appetite for work, so I keep going. I don’t really look back. So, to do that is a novel experience and quite a surreal one."

"What I try to look for is something that a general audience can relate to, to have an investment in these extraordinary people who achieve extraordinary things. That’s an easy task for an actor, to humanize these incredible machines of ideas that some of these people are. It’s not always easy, but that’s the challenge, and that’s what I’ve enjoyed doing. I’m very lucky."

"If you’re talking about playing an iconic superhero, then there’s a huge pressure that comes with the expectations of what you do with that material, even though it’s fictitious. Obviously, if it’s someone that’s real, there’s the pressures and the rightful kind of responsibility of protecting a legacy. But they’re very, very different kinds of pressures. At the end of the day, it’s about trying to do a good job."

"If I get something wrong or if I'm late it's an act of wilfulness. This is not the case; it's disorganisation on my part."

"I'm good at being self-critical. I've also been told that I'm good at taking up new sports. I'm a fast learner and pick things up very quickly."

"Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame. I'm also a great believer in treating others as you would like to be treated."

"It's part of the job to mythologise the experience, and you don't have to do that with this one. It's as easy as breath to talk about this one."

"There have enough people who been vilified in American politics to have American villains now, but it is a very American thing, to have British villains."