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Benedict Cumberbatch on Playing the Role of the... Susi_Heise






Benedict Cumberbatch: Mr. Smart Guy

The Imitation Game actor on Alan Turing, vintage video games and why he’s so good at playing complicated geniuses

You’ve played a lot of intriguing characters over the years–everyone from Alan Turing to the voice of a dragon in The Hobbit to Stephen Hawking. How many of them would you say are geniuses?

I’m not going to do this in any particular order, but Hawking, Frankenstein, Joseph Hooker [the British botanist in Creation], Oppenheimer, Turing, Assange. Van Gogh–a genius. And Sherlock.

I think you also have to count the genetically engineered superman.
Yeah, Khan [from Star Trek] is definitely smart.

You research these men before you play them. Do they have anything in common?

Well, they’re unique personalities–people who are seemingly so different that they remain in existence sort of separate from the rest of us. That is always very attractive to focus in on as an actor. My great enjoyment with these characters is to show that no, they are human beings. They have loves and likes and dislikes. They have all the sort of polarities that we experience in the human condition. But with some sort of special filters added in.

Turing was one of history’s great inventors, credited with pioneering the idea of a programmable computer and envisioning the possibility of artificial intelligence. When you tell people about him, do they know who he is?

No, and they’re shocked. Everyone goes, Why didn’t I know about this story? This man’s achievements are extraordinary. Everything that’s been thrown at computers–all of it has only managed to work because of his idea of creating something universal in the first place.

There’s also a spiritual side to his work, right? He raised questions about free will and machine vs. man.

As a philosopher, he was profoundly affected by the idea that if we could achieve artificial intelligence, could artificial intelligence achieve feeling and what we call will itself? Could it evolve a consciousness? Could it become self-aware? Could it make decisions? Could it fall in love?

Turing’s biographer Andrew Hodges said he was “slow to learn that indistinct line that separated initiative from disobedience.” How much of genius do you think is about rebelliousness?

People who push boundaries help us evolve socially, intellectually, culturally–in any field of life, any sphere.

But at a cost to themselves.

Because they’re in opposition to the majority. But those are the revolutionaries, the pioneers. Those are the people who actually help us, as a race, progress.

How do you convey that kind of complexity and intelligence in a character?

With Sherlock, it’s the pyrotechnic of making the connections very quick. That’s a joy to play. It’s really hard work and it’s frustrating as hell, but it’s very rewarding. But to convey intelligence? I don’t know. Maybe I have my mother to thank for that. Just the eyes, I think they are the windows to the soul. And I think they’re also the windows to the mind that’s driving that soul, doesn’t believe in the soul or is computing whether a soul could be made out of … metal and wire and glass. In the case of Alan.

So it’s about a lot more than dialogue.

Oh yeah. These people are all incredibly different personalities, in their bodies as well as in their minds. The unified things we could talk about are pretty obvious. A lot of them come up against obstacles, whether they’re bureaucratic or conservative. They’re pushing against a sort of unrelenting, unforgiving world that doesn’t want anything out of place or muddled with or made different. Sometimes that’s viewed as arrogance. My argument in humanizing these people–through sort of being an actor who empathizes with his characters–is that [that arrogance] is born out of necessity. It’s not something to judge them by.

Were you into computers as a kid? Not necessarily to the extent of Turing or Hawking–just in general.

I was a little bit, but not to any level of expertise. I wrote programs on BBC computers. We had computing lessons where you’d actually write coded commands to create programs to play little games or build up a Christmas tree on a BBC computer. But computers were more interesting to me when you could put a little packet in them and protect the world from nuclear strike on an Atari console or a Commodore 64. [I also liked] the little Nintendo, the handheld Donkey Kong Jr. things. And then I was always into the Sega Game Gear. That was my real interest in computing–having fun with games.

Do you still play games?

I don’t. I don’t have time. You go to bed at night sweating that you haven’t done a good day’s work or that you haven’t read that book. I’d love to, though.

You recently announced your engagement in the U.K. newspaper the Times, as many British noncelebrities do. How come?

I’m slightly old-fashioned. It’s what I would have done if I weren’t famous. That’s the idea. It’s to normalize it. So it was just about me announcing it in a traditional manner–traditional in the sense that lots of people still do that.

Our Best Inventions package in this issue features new technologies that even the geniuses you play probably didn’t imagine–a wearable chip that buzzes to improve your posture, a smart watch that monitors your heartbeat, even edible ice cream wrappers. Which sounds best to you?

Edible ice cream wrappers, tick. Definitely up for that. Not just because you can eat them, but because they’re biodegradable. That’s where technology should go–toward making us be able to sustain our life here on earth.






Go Behind TIME’s Benedict Cumberbatch Cover With Photographer Dan Winters

When Benedict Cumberbatch walked onto Dan Winters’ set for his TIME cover shoot, he came prepared. “Our stylist had found clothes for him to wear,” says Winters, “clothes that would match his character, Alan Turing, in The Imitation Game. But he showed up with a cool, modern, retro version of what he wore in the film — something, he told me, he thought Turing would have worn if alive today. He had done his homework, and we used that in the shoot.”

When TIME’s director of photography, Kira Pollack, assigned Winters to this shoot, she was looking to capitalize on the photographer’s particular style and process. “There are very few photographers who have as distinct a signature as Dan Winters,” she says. “Dan works like a film director, building sets with a precise attention to detail and an unmistakable color palette.”

And those are the very strengths Winters brought to bear on the portrait session with Cumberbatch. “I wanted to do a shout-out to The Imitation Game, and Kira and I talked about what form this would take,” says Winters. “I studied World War II extensively, especially the Enigma machine, and we thought it would be a great prop to have in the shoot.”

time-genius-coverWinters found one such machine in a museum in Vermont, “but no one in their right mind would ship an Enigma machine,” he says. With the help of Walter Isaacson, TIME’s former managing editor, the magazine’s picture department was able to secure one of the last remaining machines in the U.S. from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

“They were willing to loan it to us, and the museum’s [Vice President of Program and Business Development] Carol Stiglic actually drove it down to us in Los Angeles,” says Winters.

The photographer wanted to build a set that would look like a workshop populated with electronic equipment and cables, referencing the movie’s plot. “I built some of these machines in my studio in Austin and we shipped it all to Los Angeles for the shoot,” he says. “I made sure to position all of the props so that there would be space for Benedict to fit in — and room at the top for the TIME logo.”

The photographer also got in touch with Cumberbatch ahead of the shoot to explain his vision. “When I’m working, I always make sure that the subject is well aware of what we’re doing,” he says. “There’s nothing worse than [a subject] showing up and thinking: ‘What the hell is this?’”

But Winters didn’t have to worry, he says. “Benedict came prepared. It’s nice when a subject collaborates to the point that they’re thinking about what they should wear.”

The shoot itself was pretty smooth, says Winters, once the set was built and properly lit. “With this kind of image, you have to build your frame – put up the background and the props one piece at a time. We had someone sitting in the position Benedict would occupy, and we started squeezing things into the frame, always making sure of not overpowering the portrait.”

Winters played with different compositions and Cumberbatch was “a very good collaborator,” he says. “Actors usually understand the process of being photographed. They are used to it.”

While Cumberbatch and Winters were surrounded by antique technological devices on set, the photographer, who usually shoots with a large format film camera, had to use a digital camera. “In the past, you could get film developed in under four hours. But today, in Los Angeles, there’s a two-day turnaround. It makes it harder to use film.”

Cumberbatch’s portrait, however, didn’t suffer from this technological shift. “This soulful portrait captures the spirit of Alan Turig’s brilliant, complicated life,” says Pollack. “Dan nailed it.”

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