Live a life less ordinary.
Benedict Cumberbatch
Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame.
'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.
If you have an over-preoccupation with perception and trying to please people's expectations, then you can go mad.
The further you get away from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is great fun.
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.
Every job is incredibly different, and I love it because you're picking up skill sets and experiences. It's the university of life.
Any privacy in public is a hard thing to negotiate.
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've always wanted to play a spy, because it is the ultimate acting exercise. You are never what you seem.
There's so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.
I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.
The world of 'Sherlock Holmes' and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.
Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world.
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.
I have actual acting scars.
I wish my 15-year-old self had known about my allure to the opposite sex!
We all want to escape our circumstances, don't we? Especially if you are an actor.
My mum and dad had worked incredibly hard to afford me an education.
I'm not loyal to one genre. I want to mix it up.
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 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.
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 drag a lot of stuff round with me that I don't need.
My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a 'desert rats' tank operator in the Second World War.
Talking about class terrifies me. There is no way of winning.
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.
Fame is a weird one. You need to distance yourself from it. People see a value in you that you don't see yourself.
I'll always do 'Sherlock' - it's something I'm not going to give up on.
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.
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.
Maybe it's because I was an only child, but I've always wanted kids.
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.
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.
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.
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!
I've realised now that the reality of children is you have to be in the right place with the right person.
Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.
Lines are very difficult to learn.
I was brought up in a world of privilege.
When you see a good horseman, you're unable to tell where the instruction is coming from. It's like telepathy.
Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.
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 had the privilege of being able to choose, or at least have the opportunity to work at, being anything but an actor.
It is a wonderful thing to get married young and become a father.
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.
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.
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.
I love doing impersonations of people.
