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Benedict Cumberbatch is currently one of the hottest actors in the world, having already worked with Steven Spielberg, JJ Abrams as well as Sir Peter Jackson.
Television audiences know Cumberbatch for his title role in BBC show Sherlock Holmes, while he also stars in Steve McQueen's acclaimed film 12 Years a Slave, was seen earlier this year as the villain in Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness, played Julian Assange in Wikileaks film The Fifth Estate and has starred in Spielberg's War Horse and Thomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
In The Hobbit trilogy, Cumberbatch plays the role of Smaug the dragon.
In The Desolation of Smaug, the second film in The Hobbit trilogy, fans of epic fantasy finally get to see one of the genre's most famous dragons in all his glory. The film climaxes with his facing off against Bilbo Baggins, played by Sherlock co-star Martin Freeman.
Kate Rodger is in Los Angeles for the premiere of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and interviewed the cast and crew.
Is it true you did some of the voice recording on a motion-capture stage?
I did, yes, that's how it started. They recorded facial capture, then before that we did a lot of stuff on the mo-cap stage. That was very important to me. I actually said to Peter very early on, "Of course I want this gig, of course I want to do this. It would be a great thrill to work with you on this extraordinary character. But I don't just want it to be a disembodied voice. I want it to do something to physicalise it and I think we should do some motion-capture if you've got time". He said "Yeah, sure". I'd never done it before, so I thought, great!
So you got to put little dots all over your face?
Yeah, and you fell like a complete tit! You walk onto the stage and that's just bread and butter to them. They just say "Good morning Benedict, if you can just stand here, tat'd be fantastic. Peter is going to come down in a minute with a juice and then we can get started. Is there anything you'd like? Would you like a coffee? We've got a chair over there." And the chair says "Smaug the Dragon" on it. And I'm just saying "Yeah, I'm alright. But has anybody noticed that I'm standing here in grey lycra and I have reflective shit all over me?" And they just say "No, no we do this all the time." Then they told me I had to do my movements and I thought they meant stretching, but they meant articulation movements which start to programme in what you're going to do during the day, so that the cameras recognise you. And it is just thrilling! You're free. You're in a boring carpeted room and you have to imagine being a dragon in a lair on a mound of gold speaking to a hobbit the size of your little finger nail. You're just back in the realms of playing in your bedroom as a child. It's really, really invigorating and empowering.
And Smaug was a big part of your childhood, wasn't he?
He was. My dad read me the books when I was six or seven, I can't remember exactly when but it was before I went to boarding school when I was eight. It was a bedtime treat at home. I knew I'd been good if I got two chapters and a look at the illustrations as well, it was kind of a caveat to get me into bed and making me behave. And it f**king worked, I tell you! It also sparked off my love of literature. My dad was so good, he characterised all of folk in the story. Smaug stuck in my head in the way that it does for most children I think. Dragons really are extraordinarily powerful, beautiful, mythical, majestic creatures. I mean Smaug is corrupt, wrong, dangerous and has a kind of rotten nature, but he's still magnificent. He is stupendous and everything Bilbo says he is. But within the story, within the narrative, within the characters, you're so full of anticipation for this character, he is sort of at the centre of the story.
No pressure then?
No, no pressure at all, haha. But thank God I had the man himself, Peter Jackson, there on hand as well as the seed my dad had sew. I felt very well looked after by Peter. We got on very well together I mean you know what he's like as a human being, he's so lovely and easy and authoritative. You feel the Tolkien fans are going to be looked after by him, Phillipa and Fran. Between the three of them, they're very respectful to the canon, and they have to be, quite rightly, they should be. We were never going to stray too far from the dragon in the books. It was important to trust that.
You've worked with Martin Freeman on Sherlock before working together on The Hobbit.
Yes, and yet we never, ever met, we never acted opposite each other. We've worked a lot in a very hot, sweaty boxing factory somewhere in Wales. To be in that hot little studio, very close to each other, and then to be this huge, massive, skyscraper size serpent acting with Martin on a screen. I mean we never crossed over for this, so it was very strange. The thing I was most worried about was what the dynamic would be like in the scene, but it works really, really well.
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Benedict Cumberbatch has revealed that his voice work for his The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug character was in tribute to his father's reading of JRR Tolkien's books as bedtime stories.
The Sherlock star said his love of literature had been inspired by actor dad Timothy Carlton's characterisations when he read them aloud and that his own voice performances as dragon Smaug and the Necromancer were in homage to him.
Benedict, 37, said of his memories of Hobbit bedtime stories with his dad: "Ripping off is probably putting it a bit strongly because I was six or seven at the time, but he definitely sowed the seed.
"He's a great, great, great voice artist, he's a great actor, and so he kind of installed a love for literature in me. That was the first time I'd ever heard the written word and just this explosion of an imaginary landscape in my head, I thought, 'Wow, that can come off a page in black and white? This is insane.'
"Not least because he did do the most extraordinary characterisations, not just Smaug but Gollum and Gandalf and the Hobbit himself, so he could always step into one of the character's shoes should one of the actors get ill."
Benedict continued: "But seriously, I owe a lot to my dad, so yeah, in a way this feels a little bit like homage to him, or at least a kind of doffing of my cap with some welly and gusto."
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Интервью MTV Benedict Cumberbatch Discusses His Dual Role In 'The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug'
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