“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”