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Benedict Cumberbatch talks about being posh and typecast

Benedict chats to GQ about the media's "posh" jibes, meeting Madonna and roles after Sherlock.

Benedict Cumberbatch is definitely the best of British. The actor has made many notable appearances in successful films over the years, but it wasn’t until he took the lead in Sherlock that we truly fell in love with him.

The actor is the cover star of GQ’s January issue, which those of you with a subscription to the magazine will have already received.

Cumberbatch is often called out by the media for being a “public schoolboy”, to the point where even his words are twisted when giving interviews to make him sound snobbish. It has made him guarded and unwilling to let anything he says be misinterpreted. “I’m an upper middle-class kid,” he tells GQ. “I know that’s counted as posh, but then I know people who I would call posh, and I don’t talk like them.”

We find it difficult to imagine what celebs say to one another when they meet – or if they ever get star struck, but it seems they can be just as awkward as us. For example, when he met Madonna: “She said, ‘You’re the one with the strange name.’ I said, “Yes, I am - Madonna,’” or Meryl Streep: “She just said, ‘Well I love what you do,” and even Ted Danson: “It was a pre-Oscar party and he just screamed across a crowded room, ‘Oh my God! F***! It’s Sherlock! You’re Sherlock! Oh God!.”

Many may say that he will forever be type cast in those darker roles from now on. “Look, I know that everything I do now will have flavours of Sherlock,” he says. “Everyone wants those dark, complicated antiheroes, and of course I play them. But I also play Charles in August: Osage County, Ford in 12 Years A Slave and Alexander in Stuart: A Life Backwards - he’s a pretty open book; smart man though is, the complexity is all about Stuart [a homeless man played by Tom Hardy]. Alexander’s an every man; he’s not super-sleuthing or crackin code or breaking algorithms. I mix it up.”

Cumberbatch also tells GQ about the five times he has cheated death… but we’ll let you read about that in the Janusry issue.

Subscribe and save on a GQ magazine subscription today.

Posted by Steve Price.

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