Age, Biography, and Wiki
- Full Name: Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch
- Date of Birth: July 19, 1976
- Age (2025): 48
- Place of Birth: White City district, West London (Hammersmith and Fulham borough)
- Nationality: English
- Parents: Timothy Carlton (actor) and Wanda Ventham (actress)
- Education: Brambletye School, Harrow School, University of Manchester (Drama), London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (M.A. Classical Acting)
- Notable Achievements: BAFTA TV Award, Primetime Emmy Award, Laurence Olivier Award, Academy Award nominations, Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE)
Benedict Cumberbatch grew up in a family of actors and developed a passion for theater from an early age. He made his acting debut at 12 in "A Midsummer Night’s Dream." After graduating from Harrow, he spent a gap year teaching English at a Tibetan monastery in India before pursuing higher education in drama and classical acting.
Occupation | Voice Actors |
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Date of Birth | 19 July 1976 |
Age | 48 Years |
Birth Place | Hammersmith, London, England |
Horoscope | Cancer |
Country | England |
Height, Weight & Measurements
- Height: Approximately 6'0" (183 cm)
- Weight: Around 170 lbs (77 kg)
- Body Measurements: Not publicly confirmed, but he maintains a slim and athletic physique
Height | 183 cm |
Weight | 170 lbs |
Body Measurements | |
Eye Color | |
Hair Color |
Dating & Relationship Status
- Relationship Status: Married
- Spouse: Sophie Hunter (theatre and opera director, married in 2015)
- Children: Three sons (born between 2015 and 2020)
Benedict Cumberbatch is happily married and maintains a relatively private family life.
In 2012, he provided the voice of Dante Alighieri in the documentary Girlfriend in a Coma. In 2013, Cumberbatch narrated the documentary film Jerusalem about the ancient city. It was distributed by National Geographic Cinema Ventures in IMAX 3D theatres worldwide. The same year, he appeared as a special guest in a recording of Gordon Getty's opera Usher House, where he voiced the role of "the visitor", recorded and released by PENTATONE.
Parents | |
Husband | Sophie Hunter (m. 14 February 2015) |
Sibling | |
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Net Worth and Salary
- Net Worth (2025): Estimated between $30 and $40 million
- Annual Salary: Up to $10 million per year
- Main Source of Income: Acting (film, television, theater), endorsements
- Key Earnings: Estimated $6 million per Marvel film (Doctor Strange, Avengers series), with potential for increases in later appearances
These properties were passed down through the generations to Benedict's great-great-great-grandfather, Abraham Parry Cumberbatch (died 1840 in Hellingly, Sussex). He was an absentee landlord of two estates, Cleland and Lammings, for which he received £5388 as slave compensation (via the Slave Compensation Act 1837, four years after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 had abolished slavery). The Cleland plantation enslaved 250 people, and was the main source of the Cumberbatch family's considerable wealth at the time; they were one of the richest families in Britain.
Career, Business, and Investments
- Career Highlights:
- TV: Sherlock Holmes in "Sherlock" (2010–2017, Emmy-winning role), "Patrick Melrose" (BAFTA-winning role)
- Film: "The Other Boleyn Girl," "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," "Doctor Strange" series, "Avengers" franchise, "The Imitation Game" (Academy Award nomination)
- Theater: "Frankenstein" (Laurence Olivier Award), "Hamlet" (Barbican Theatre, 2015)
- Business & Investments: Aside from acting, Cumberbatch is involved in various endorsement deals and maintains a solid portfolio of investments in real estate and arts initiatives. He is also known for his philanthropic efforts, donating to theater, education, and humanitarian causes.
- Awards: Multiple BAFTA, Emmy, and Olivier Awards; Academy Award nominations
Cumberbatch attended boarding schools from the age of eight, attending Brambletye, a prep school near East Grinstead, West Sussex. He undertook secondary schooling as an arts scholar at Harrow School. He was a member of the Rattigan Society, Harrow's principal club for the dramatic arts, which was named after Old Harrovian and playwright Sir Terence Rattigan. He was involved in numerous Shakespearean works at school and made his acting debut as Titania, Queen of the Fairies, in A Midsummer Night's Dream when he was 12. His first leading role was as Eliza Doolittle in Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, in a production by the Head of Classics, James Morwood, who observed that Cumberbatch "acted everyone else off the stage". Cumberbatch's drama teacher, Martin Tyrell, called him "the best schoolboy actor" he had ever worked with. Despite his abilities, Cumberbatch's drama teacher at Harrow warned him against a career in acting, calling it a "tough business".
Cumberbatch was a part of a cast featuring members of the Royal National Theatre Company in 50 Years on Stage, the Royal National Theatre's landmark event for its 50th anniversary on 2 November 2013. He played Rosencrantz in a selected scene from Sir Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The show was directed by Sir Nicholas Hytner and was broadcast on BBC Two and in cinemas worldwide as a part of National Theatre Live.
Cumberbatch returned to theatre to play Shakespeare's Hamlet at London's Barbican Theatre. The production was directed by Lyndsey Turner and produced by Sonia Friedman, which started its 12-week run in August 2015. The performance, co-starring Sian Brooke, was broadcast by the National Theatre Company by satellite internationally as Hamlet in Rehearsal. He earned his third Laurence Olivier Awards nomination for the role.
The 2006 film Starter for 10 has been credited with helping launch Cumberbatch's big-screen career. Also in 2006, Cumberbatch played late 18th/early 19th century British parliamentarian William Pitt the Younger in Amazing Grace, a role that garnered him a nomination for the London Film Critics Circle "British Breakthrough Acting Award". In Atonement (2007), Cumberbatch played what The Guardian called one of his "small parts in big films", and came to the attention of Sue Vertue and Stephen Moffat, who would later cast him in Sherlock. In 2008, he had a supporting role in The Other Boleyn Girl, and the next year he appeared in the Charles Darwin biographical film Creation as Darwin's friend Joseph Hooker. In 2010, he appeared in The Whistleblower as well as Four Lions. He portrayed Peter Guillam, George Smiley's right-hand man, in the 2011 adaptation of the John le Carré novel Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The film was directed by Tomas Alfredson and featured Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. Cumberbatch played Major Jamie Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse in 2011.
In 2013, Cumberbatch appeared in J. J. Abrams' sequel, Star Trek Into Darkness, as Khan, the film's antagonist. Three of the four films he featured in during the second half of 2013 premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival: The Fifth Estate, in which he played WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, 12 Years a Slave, in which he played William Prince Ford, a slave owner, and August: Osage County, in which he played Charles Aiken. For the official soundtrack of the latter film, he recorded a song titled "Can't Keep it Inside".
Cumberbatch, Adam Ackland, writer-director Patrick Monroe, action coordinator Ben Dillon, and production manager Adam Selves launched a production company, SunnyMarch Ltd., in late 2013.
Their first project under the company's banner was the £87,000 crowd-funded short film Little Favour, written and directed by Monroe with Cumberbatch in the lead role. The 30-minute action-thriller became internationally available on iTunes on 5 November 2013. In 2022 filming began on The End We Start From, an adaptation of the Megan Hunter novel of the same name, the rights to which the company had acquired in 2017.
In May 2014, he joined Prince William and Ralph Lauren at Windsor Castle for a cancer awareness and fundraising gala for the benefit of the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust. Cumberbatch stated, "Cancer isn't a disease that needs much awareness, but it does need continued funding for research." In September 2014, he participated in a video campaign for Stand Up To Cancer. Cumberbatch posed for photographer Jason Bell for an exhibition at Pall Mall, London from 16 to 20 September 2014 to mark 10 years of the "Give Up Clothes For Good" charity campaign, which has raised £17 million for Cancer Research UK. In 2014, Cumberbatch publicly backed "Hacked Off" and its campaign for UK press self-regulation by "safeguarding the press from political interference while also giving vital protection to the vulnerable."
Social Network
- Instagram: @benedictdaily (fan account), no official public account
- Twitter: Not active publicly
- Other: Benedict Cumberbatch maintains a low profile on social media, focusing on his professional work and personal life. Most official news is shared through interviews, production companies, or fan pages.
In 2010, Cumberbatch portrayed Vincent van Gogh in Van Gogh: Painted with Words. The Daily Telegraph called his performance "[a] treat ... vividly bringing Van Gogh to impassioned, blue-eyed life". In the same year, Cumberbatch began playing Sherlock Holmes in the joint BBC/PBS television series Sherlock, to critical acclaim. The second series began on New Year's Day 2012 in the United Kingdom and was broadcast on PBS in the United States in May 2012. The third series aired on PBS over a period of three weeks in January to February 2014. Cumberbatch won an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for the third episode of the third series of the show entitled His Last Vow. Cumberbatch has one of the most aggressive fanbases to date, part of the 'Big Three' fandoms on the social media site Tumblr, called SuperWhoLock. In April 2015, Cumberbatch was nominated for his sixth British Academy Television Award for Best Leading Actor for the third series of the Sherlock. In 2016, he was once again nominated for an Emmy as Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie, this time for Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.
In 2012, Cumberbatch provided the voice and motion-capture for both Smaug the Dragon and the Necromancer in An Unexpected Journey, the first instalment of The Hobbit series based on the novel of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien. He reprised his roles as Smaug and the Necromancer for The Desolation of Smaug (2013) and The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). For the motion-capture aspect of the films, he used a suit and facial markers to highlight the dragon's expressions and movements. Cumberbatch told Total Film "You just have to lose your shit on a carpeted floor, in a place that looks a little bit like a mundane government building. It was just me as well, with four static cameras and all the sensors."
Cumberbatch starred as the titular character in Wes Anderson's The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (2023), a short film adaptation of a short story by Roald Dahl, opposite Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel and Ben Kingsley.
Cumberbatch has narrated numerous documentaries for the National Geographic and Discovery channels. He has also read for several audiobooks, including Casanova, The Tempest, The Making of Music, Death in a White Tie, Artists in Crime, Tom and Viv, and Sherlock Holmes: The Rediscovered Railway Mysteries and Other Stories. He has done voice-overs for several commercials, including for major names Jaguar, Sony, Pimms, and Google+, performing the Seven Ages of Man monologue. For the 2012 London Olympics, he appeared in a short film on the history of London, which began the BBC coverage of the opening ceremony. He made appearances for two Cheltenham Festivals, in July 2012 for Music when he read World War I poetry and prose accompanied by piano pieces and in October 2012 for Literature when he discussed Sherlock and Parade's End at The Centaur. In 2012, he lent his voice to a four-part, spoken-word track titled "Flat of Angles" for Late Night Tales based on a story written by author and poet Simon Cleary, the final instalment of which was released on 9 May 2014.
In a November 2014 cover story for Out promoting The Imitation Game, Cumberbatch opened up about sexual experimentation during his time in boarding schools stating, "While there was experimentation, it had never occurred to me as, 'Oh, this is that!' It was just boys and their penises, the same way with girls and vaginas and boobs. It wasn't out of desire." LGBT group Stonewall released a statement praising Cumberbatch's comments, saying, "Seeing someone in the public eye – especially somebody as influential as Benedict – talking positively around gay issues, is powerful for young lesbian, gay and bisexual people. It is often difficult for those growing up to find role models who demonstrate that it is equally okay to be gay or straight."
Education
- Early Education: Brambletye School, Harrow School
- Higher Education: University of Manchester (Drama), London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (M.A. Classical Acting)
- Extracurricular: Member of The Rattigan Society (dramatic arts club at Harrow)
Cumberbatch's educational background laid a strong foundation for his understanding of the performing arts, and his experiences in both boarding school and higher education shaped his approach to acting.
Cumberbatch studied drama at the Victoria University of Manchester and obtained a Master of Arts in classical acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He began acting in Shakespearean theatre productions before making his West End debut in Richard Eyre's revival of Hedda Gabler in 2005. Since then, he has starred in Royal National Theatre productions of After the Dance (2010) and Frankenstein (2011), winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for the latter. In 2015, he played the title role in Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre.
After leaving Harrow, Cumberbatch took a gap year to volunteer as an English teacher at a Tibetan monastery in Darjeeling, India. He then attended the Victoria University of Manchester, where he studied drama. He continued his training as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), graduating with an MA in classical acting. In January 2018, Cumberbatch succeeded Timothy West as president of LAMDA.
There has been media speculation that the Barbados National Task Force on Reparations, which, as part of the wider Caribbean's CARICOM Reparations Commission, is as of seeking reparations from wealthy British MP Richard Drax for his ancestors' involvement in slavery, might also consider seeking reparations from families such as the Cumberbatches. Benedict Cumberbatch has said that by the time of his birth, most of the money had run out, and he grew up "definitely middle class", or upper middle class. The Drax family still owns a large estate in Barbados, and Richard Drax is said to be worth at least £150 million. Barbados′ officials have since rebuked those speculations and called them a "Campaign of deceptive and misleading British 'yellow journalism.