Benedict Cumberbatch quotes:

People's hands fascinate me. It's tempting to look at a businessman's left hand and see if there's an indentation from a missing wedding ring. Or maybe there's a tan line and the skin is pressed down where's he's worked a ring off his finger.

Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame.

We're living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.

I'm a Prince of Wales Trust ambassador, so I'm all about giving youth an education, a voice and a chance to not take the wrong road.

New York City is crazy and beautiful and really close to my heart, and I've always had dear friends here - family, actually, I would say.

Frankenstein' was all about the idea that, through electricity and the destruction of night, man creating light and darkness, we took on god-like powers and then abused them like gods, and we are only men. That's a story about man making a man in his own image. The inversion of natural order.

Pull the hair on my head the wrong way, and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles.

I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.

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!

Every job is incredibly different, and I love it because you're picking up skill sets and experiences. It's the university of life.

My first agent dissuaded me from calling myself 'Cumberbatch.' I had six months of not very productive time with her, so I changed agents. The new one said, 'Why aren't you using your family name? It's a real attention-grabber.' I worried, 'How much is it going to cost to put my name in lights?' But then I decided that's not my problem.

When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don't really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it's not fair that others aren't doing exactly what you're doing. I do have that.

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.'

My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan's 'The Browning Version,' where my job was to make school-masters' wives weep with recognition.

A woman who knows that she doesn't have to get all decked out to look good is sexy. A woman who can make you feel smart with her conversation skills is also sexy. I believe the sense of humor is important.

I am a PR disaster because I talk too much.

Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

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 think with any characterization there's a point where you empathize, no matter how much of a deviance his or her actions may be from your understanding of humanity.

I'll always do 'Sherlock' - it's something I'm not going to give up on.

My mum and dad had worked incredibly hard to afford me an education.

Metaphorically speaking, it's easy to bump into one another on the journey from A to B and not even notice. People should take time to notice, enjoy and help each other.

I was happy as an only child, but I've always wanted to be part of a bigger family.

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've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.

To get a horse to hit a mark without a rider, to get it to stand up, to get it to rear, to get it to pick up a bucket and bring it over is amazing. It's hard work and very rewarding but can be dangerous.

I wasn't born into land or titles, or new money, or an oil rig.

There's no shame in stealing - any actor who says he doesn't is lying. You steal from everything.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

I have an appetite for the normal in my life, as well as the abnormal.

I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.

My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a 'desert rats' tank operator in the Second World War.

I'm interested in art for all. I don't want it to be only the sons and daughters of Tory MPs who get to see my plays.

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

Fame is a weird one. You need to distance yourself from it. People see a value in you that you don't see yourself.

Talking about class terrifies me. There is no way of winning.

Having your adolescence at an all-male boarding school is just crap.

I remember very clearly someone saying, 'Don't shake hands with the cactus,' and I thought, 'Well, why not? What could possibly go wrong?' Shaking hands is a friendly gesture.

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.

The first time we did cavalry charge I was so breathless with excitement I nearly fell off the horse. I actually saw stars in front of my eyes and thought I was going to faint. The second time I had a bit more control but was still giddy with excitement. And the third time I was an emotional wreck. I had to really try hard not to cry.

Do awards change careers? Well, I haven't heard of many stories where that's the case. It's a fun excuse to meet colleagues and celebrate people who've done well that year in certain people's eyes, and it's nothing more than that.

Conan Doyle is amazing in the way he has Watson describe Sherlock's posture, mood swings, his hand gestures, and so forth in the novels.

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.

I always seem to be cast as slightly wan, ethereal, troubled intellectuals or physically ambivalent bad lovers. But I'm here to tell you I'm quite the opposite in real life. In fact I'm a f**king fantastic lover.

Cumberbatch - it sounds like a fart in a bath, doesn't it? What a fluffy old name. I can never say it on a Monday morning. When I became an actor, Mum wasn't keen on me keeping it.

I want to be able to play trailer-bound fatties in a Judd Apatow comedy.

The world of 'Sherlock Holmes' and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.

Any irrational fears?no, i'm quite a rationalist. i'm not superstitious, i think life is too full of natural wonders and logical complexities to worry about illogical things.

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.

Looking for happiness is a sure way to sadness, I think. You have to take each moment as it comes.

One of the best things about being an actor is that it's a meritocracy.

I ate healthily, but there was no snacking, no drinking, no bread, no sugar, no smoking. Afterwards I had a pork belly roast.

I've been reading the books. It's the origination, it's the primary source. You should always go back to the books.

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 had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor.

When you're a kid, 'Star Trek' is a slower burn. It's funny, it's entertaining, but it also has a maturity about it - which is its universal appeal, I think.

The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.

I am very flattered. I have also become a verb as in "I have cumberbatched the UK audience" apparently. Who knows, by the end of the year I might become a swear word too! It's crazy and fun and very flattering.

I've been quite a late developer on the clothes front, but I've suddenly realised it is one of life's joys.

I was thrilled with how the first series of 'Sherlock' was received. It was such great fun to film, which makes it so rewarding when something you enjoy is so well received.

When you freefall for 7,000 feet it doesn't feel like you're falling: it feels like you're floating, a bit like scuba diving.

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

There's still nearly the same amount of slavery, if not more, in the world today, as there was at the height of the slave trade.

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

I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book.

There's a huge raft of roles that actors in our culture perform, and you can see any one of about three Hamlets in a year. It's not something to be completely daunted by.

One of the fears of having too much work is not having time to observe. And once you get recognised, there is nowhere for you to look any more. You can't sit on a night bus and watch it all happen.

Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.

You have to sometimes just run with the problem rather than trying to solve it with hi-tech wizardry and lots of planning.

Live a life less ordinary.

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 wish my 15-year-old self had known about my allure to the opposite sex!

There's so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.

Sherlock' fans are, by and large, an intelligent breed, so they've gone through my back catalogue and got what I've done, why and how I've done it. There is some obsessive behaviour, but I worry for them rather than me.

I love doing impersonations of people.

I realised quite early on that, although I wasn't trying to make a career speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals.

Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.

Our daily lives are so mundane, we get taken over by what is immediately in front of us and we don't see beyond that.

Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world.

It's difficult because nothing's preordained by plan and you can't control it. That's one of those joys and thrills and nerve-racking realities of being an actor. A lot has to do with luck, no matter what your talent or contribution can be.

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

Someone will always hate what I say. There's always going to be somebody spitting blood about my wooden-faced, toffee-named, crappy acting.

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.

The number of people my age, younger now, a whole generation younger, who are fiercely bright, over-educated, under-employed and who are politicised and purposeless really upsets me. It's soul-destroying.

Any privacy in public is a hard thing to negotiate.

When you see a good horseman, you're unable to tell where the instruction is coming from. It's like telepathy.

It is a wonderful thing to get married young and become a father.

Lines are very difficult to learn.

Benedict' means 'blessed.' My parents liked the sound of the name and felt slightly blessed because they'd been trying for a child for a very long time.

Maybe it's because I was an only child, but I've always wanted kids.

When are you ever settled enough to have kids?

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.

Those are more universal things than some of the characters I play, who are slightly sociopathic. I keep reminding people I can do ordinary.

Thus, a vision of the whole gradually grew for me that was nourished by the various experiences and realizations I had encountered along my theological path. I rejoiced to be able to say something of my own, something new and yet completely within the faith of the Church. The feeling of aquiring a theological vision that was ever more clearly my own was the most wonderful experience of those years.

I think what I loved in cinema - and what I mean by cinema is not just films, but proper, classical cinema - are the extraordinary moments that can occur on screen. At the same time, I do feel that cinema and theater feed each other. I feel like you can do close-up on stage and you can do something very bold and highly characterized - and, dare I say, theatrical - on camera. I think the cameras and the viewpoints shift depending on the intensity and integrity of your intention and focus on that.

We should have a conversation when we hang up.

There are things that are a given, that you've already established, and obviously, visually, certain iconic things that can't be completely removed, like a certain hat or a certain coat in my case.

You come into this world as you leave it, on your own. It's made me want to live a life slightly less ordinary.

There's a heroic amount of effort that goes into making him [Doctor Strange] a superhero by the end of the film.

I've been very lucky at what's happened in my career to date, but playing something as far from me as possible is an ambition of mine - anything from a mutated baddy in a comic book action thriller, to a detective. If anything, I'd like Gary Oldman's career: he's the perfect example of it. I've love to have a really broad sweep of characters - to be able to do something edgy, surprising and unfashionable.

[Doctor Strange ] is slightly more specialised than Spider-Man or Superman or Batman, but he's very loved by people who know him.

I try to work hard. I'm really proud of what I get to do as a living. I still pinch myself. But I also know it's a craft, and I can get better at it and learn every time I do it. So I try to work hard no matter what the task is.

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,

Being someone who is of our sensual reality, Stephen Strange has a lifestyle, he has a sexuality, he's materialistic.

I think now with fundamentalists, people who treat belief with a total lack of humor or empathy for any other viewpoint than their own - they, to me, are the enemy. And those people are born out of desperate extremes.

[ Stephen Strange] is less strange than other characters I've played. He's lost the power to love, which doesn't make him a nasty person. I just think he's closed-off.

Marvel always make it fresh so you can give it your personal twist.

Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and '90s to make sure the school bills were paid.

We all want to escape our circumstances, don't we? Especially if you are an actor.

[Doctor Strange] is a really rich character. It's an easy thing to have a good old meal every day. It's great. Yeah, I'm excited.

For brain surgeons it's particularly difficult to deal with failure. It was fascinating to learn about that whole world.

Even though Doctor Strange is an established character, when you're doing an origin story there's a lot of room for manoeuvre.

I want to do it all. I want to climb mountains, go through jungles, fight wars in space, get the girl, shoot the bad-guy full of lead, have all the zippy one liners, bulge muscles out of a singlet, drip sweat and blood on screen, all of that.

You let things run in order to have some sanity and be able to do your work and not feel pre-judged.

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.

Honestly, it's very satisfying, and I'm very, very happy about how successful the last few years have been. It's great for the people who supported me early on to see the success I'm enjoying now.

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.