Cumberbatch enjoys playing intelligent people onscreen

Actor Benedict Cumberbatch talks about playing British computer scientist Alan Turing in a recently released film

 Source: timeout

Movies that have war as the backdrop usually feature stories of celebrated heroes and their achievements during the course of the particular battle. But The Imitation Game, which released recently in India, is a lesser known tale about Alan Turing, a British computer scientist who played an important role in the Allies’ victory in the Second World War.

Source: cdn.hitfix.com/

Actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Turing in the film, says that this movie will make Turing more known. “His story isn’t as upfront as it should be. What needs to be investigated is what he actually achieved. I want people to see this film in order for him (Turing) to be far more widely known,” says Cumberbatch.      

 Be it the role of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in the film, The Fifth Estate (2013), or the character of renowned British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking in the TV movie Hawking (2004), it seems Cumberbatch has a knack at playing intelligent people. “What I try to look for is something that a general audience can relate to, to have an investment in these extraordinary people who achieve extraordinary things. That’s an easy task for an actor to humanize these incredible machines of ideas that some of these people are. It’s not always easy, but that’s the challenge, and that’s what I’ve enjoyed doing,” he says. 

  Cumberbatch, who will be playing the role of superhero Doctor Strange in an upcoming film, says that there is a big difference between playing a real person and a fictional character. “If you’re talking about playing an iconic superhero, then there’s a huge pressure that comes with the expectations of what you do with that material, even though it’s fictitious. If it’s someone that’s real, there is the pressure and the rightful kind of responsibility of protecting a legacy. But they’re very different kinds of pressures,” he says.