Man of the moment - Spotlight Online

FILM | Profile
Man of
the moment
In letzter Zeit ist der britische Schauspieler
Benedict Cumberbatch einfach allgegenwärtig.
Das liegt sicher nicht zuletzt an seinem
herausragenden Talent. Von NIGEL MARSH
O
ne man in his time plays many parts,” wrote Shakespeare in the play As You Like It. Benedict Cumberbatch has played more parts than most men,
and right now, he is one of the busiest actors in the world.
As well as shooting new television and movie projects, the
star of the Sherlock series and the film The Imitation Game
has been caught up in a whirlwind of award ceremonies
and interviews since the start of the year.
Born and raised in London, the 38-year-old superstar
has an acting pedigree. Both his mother and father, Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton, had successful acting
careers, although they did not want the young Benedict
to become an actor. “They wanted me to be anything
but,” he told Variety magazine. “They afforded me a ridiculous education and all of their love. It was utterly selfless
and self-sacrificing.” Wanda and Timothy are enormously
proud of what he has achieved and have even performed
with him, appearing in Sherlock as the detective’s parents.
The roots of his acting experience were planted at an
early age. Talking to the London Theatre Guide, Cumberbatch remembers his earliest leading role, as “a very bossy
Joseph in the nativity play at primary school. Apparently,
I pushed Mary offstage because she was taking too long.”
At Harrow, one of Britain’s most expensive and
high-profile boys’ schools, Cumberbatch’s acting talent
flourished. It was clear to drama teacher Martin Tyrell
that the 13-year-old would become an outstanding actor. “It’s probably once in a lifetime that you find a boy
actor as magnificent as this,” he told the Radio Times.
caught up: be ~ in sth.
[kO:t (Vp]
flourish [(flVrIS]
magnificent [mÄg(nIfIsEnt]
pedigree [(pedIgri:]
self-sacrificing
[)self (sÄkrIfaIsIN]
utterly [(VtEli]
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in etw. geraten sein
gedeihen, aufblühen
großartig, überwältigend
Stammbaum
selbstaufopfernd
völlig, total
The best of
Das ist eine
BildunterBritish
talent:
schrift. DasBenedict
ist eine
Bildunterschrift.
Cumberbatch
Fotos: Getty Images; BBC
On the air: the actor on
a US radio show in 2014
“I remember him auditioning very early on
for the part of a saucy
French maid in a farce.
It was a small part, involving a feather duster
for about 10 minutes,
but even then in rehearsal he was strikingly mature.”
It was at Harrow
that the actor had what
he considers to be his first proper role, when he played
Titania, the queen of the fairies, in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
After disappointing A levels (“I discovered girls, pot
and all sorts of other things, so I got a bit lazy,” he told
Metro), Cumberbatch left Harrow to spend a year as a volunteer, teaching English to Buddhist monks in Tibet. He
then studied drama at Manchester University, followed by
a year at the respected London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
After graduating in 2001, he began
his professional career at the Regent’s
Park Open Air Theatre in London.
Under a summer sky, he played two
more Shakespearean roles: Ferdinand
in Love’s Labour’s Lost and Demetrius
in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Since his debut, Cumberbatch has
taken on increasingly distinguished
parts. One, the most talked about of
recent years, was when he worked with
Jonny Lee Miller in a dramatic staging
of Mary Shelley’s classic novel Frankenstein at the National Theatre in 2011.
For each performance, the two actors
swapped roles, each taking it in turn to
play the tragic Victor Frankenstein and
his monstrous creation. Cumberbatch
and Miller are the only actors ever to win the Olivier Best
Actor award jointly.
The role of Shakespeare’s Hamlet is often said to be
the pinnacle of any stage actor’s career. In a 2005 interview with WhatsOnStage, Cumberbatch revealed that it is
the part he would most like to perform. Later this year, he
will realize his ambition when he plays the Danish prince
at the Barbican Centre in London from 5 August. If you
were hoping to get tickets, you will probably be out of
luck. It is the fastest-selling show in British stage history,
and the main allocation of tickets was completely sold
out on the day they went on sale in August last year. The
Barbican has revealed, however, that one hundred more
tickets will go on sale for each performance.
Cumberbatch has been working on British radio since
2004, when he played a minor character in a BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. Since then, he
has been heard in numerous dramas and serials, including
the award-winning BBC radio comedy Cabin Pressure, in
which he plays the hapless airline captain Martin Crieff.
The programme was so popular that the final episode received a record number of requests for audience tickets
for a BBC radio comedy recording — 22,854 requests for
just 200 tickets.
Yet it is through television that Benedict Cumberbatch became a household name. Early in his career,
he came to public attention in the BBC television film
Hawking. His portrayal of the early struggles of physicist Stephen Hawking was praised by critics and gained
him his first nomination for a “best actor” award from the
British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). It
was six years later, however, on the evening of 23 August
2010, that Cumberbatch became a superstar on British
television. Ten million viewers saw him create a Sherlock
The series that made
him famous: Cumberbatch as a modern
Sherlock Holmes
allocation [)ÄlE(keIS&n]
audition [O:(dIS&n]
distinguished [dI(stINgwISt]
feather duster [)feDE (dVstE]
graduate [(grÄdZueIt]
hapless [(hÄplEs]
household name
[)haUshEUld (neIm]
mature [mE(tSUE]
reveal [ri(vi:&l]
saucy [(sO:si] ifml.
strikingly [(straIkINli]
swap [swQp]
take on [teIk (Qn]
Vergabe, Zuteilung
vorsprechen, vorspielen
angesehen, bedeutend
Staubwedel
einen Abschluss machen
glücklos
allgemein bekannter Name
reif, erwachsen
enthüllen, verraten
frech, keck
auffällig, verblüffend
wechseln, tauschen
übernehmen, annehmen
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