How skilled a secret keeper is Benedict Cumberbatch if he readily confesses the easiest method for extracting secrets from him? Asked for information about one of the many coming projects he cannot talk about,Cumberbatch,the 35-year-old British actor,offered a facetious response. You could stick a knife in my thigh,and I wouldnt tell you, he said. But he added: Pull the hair on my head the wrong way,and I would be on my knees begging for mercy. I have very sensitive follicles. Deeper still within his head were numerous vital details that Cumberbatchs work required him to keep locked away. There was not much he could say about his dual roles as a necromancer and a talking dragon in Peter Jacksons film adaptation of The Hobbit,and even less about the part he was shooting in J.J. Abrams sequel to Star Trek. (Ive got to be a complete and utter tease, he said) What Cumberbatch can confirm is that these opportunities were made possible by the success of Sherlock ,the TV series that casts him as a cool and contemporaryif brutally rationalupgrade of Sherlock Holmes. In Britain,where Sherlock is shown on BBC One,the series has left millions of fans frantic to know the resolution of a season-ending cliffhanger. He makes no secret of his desire to see Sherlock enjoy similar acclaim in the land of Mad Men and Modern Family . Im desperate for America to really take to this, he said. Because I just think its of that quality,and it belongs there. In haphazard fashion Cumberbatch has spent the past 18 months ricocheting from role to role,in British stage productions like After the Dance and Frankenstein; a coming TV version of Parades End,adapted by Tom Stoppard from the Ford Madox Ford novels; and films like The Hobbit,War Horse and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy . Last December,he got a call that J J Abrams,producer-writer and director who wanted him to submit a videotaped audition for the not-so-good guy in the Star Trek sequel. He got the role after a superb audition. Cumberbatch realized too that Sherlock would shine a spotlight on him in a way he hadnt previously experienced. I knew it would accelerate wherever I was at, he said. He became a star. The address of his London home became public knowledge when he applied to expand his apartment into the one beneath it,and his breakup with a girlfriend hed known since college was much discussed in the tabloids. Season 2 of Sherlock,which presents 21st-century takes on the classic Holmes adventures A Scandal in Bohemia,The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Final Problem,offers Cumberbatch further opportunity to build on his portrait of the consulting detective as a cocky but not fully formed young man. Paired once again with Dr John Watson (Martin Freeman),Holmes is drawn further into his rivalry with the archfiend Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott) and meets the mysterious Irene Adler (Lara Pulver),who stirs some decidedly warm feelings beneath the characters coldblooded facade. The most prominent attraction is of the mind, Pulver said. Otherwise it would have literally been an episode of two people wanting to rip each others clothes off,and weve all seen that. Cumberbatch rejected a popular interpretation that the character has Asperger syndrome. Hes a high-functioning sociopath, he said. He wants to cut to the chase. He wants everything to be faster and better and purer.
