If you're interested in finding out about the award-winning British actor, here are some interesting facts.
1) His parents are also actors: Timothy Carlton - he worked for productions like The Lotus Eaters, The Lucky Touch, and The Scarlet Pimpernel - and Wanda Ventham - famous in the 70s for her role as Virginia Lake in UFO and as Pamela Parry in the fiction Only Fools and Horses.
2) Who are his best friends? James McAvoy, Tom Hardy, Martin Freeman and Jonny Lee Miller are the ones who stand out within the industry.
3) His idol? He is a fan of Robert Downey Jr.
4) Before studying at the Manchester University School of Dramatic Arts, he took a sabbatical when he finished high school and went to Tibet to teach English in a monastery.
5) He voiced the famous yellow family series - he played the Prime Minister of the UK and Harry Potter character Severus Snape (in a 2013 Valentine's Day special).
6) When he was in South Africa filming miniseries To the Ends of the Earth in 2005, both he and his team were kidnapped by a group of criminals. Hopeless, Cumberbatch asked to be untied as he suffered from circulation problems, but this did not convince the kidnappers, who tried to put him in the trunk. How did they save themselves? The actor psychologically manipulated them by telling them that he had a strange condition in his heart and brain and that if they locked him up, he would die. After the tense moment, they were released.
Where to see his excellent work?
The Courier, the upcoming film by Dominic Cooke, where he plays Greville Wynne, a British businessman recruited by an MI6 agent (Rachel Brosnahan) as a courier to pass secret information to London about Soviet agent Oleg Penkovsky (Merab Ninidze).
