Benedict Cumberbatch (15 page)

The film role Alfredson offered him in 2010 was Peter Guillam, the MI6 protégé of George Smiley, in a big-screen version of
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
. The creation of the novelist John le Carré, previously it had been a BBC television series at the end of the 1970s, with Alec Guinness in the starring role. Born in 1931 as David John Moore Cornwell, le Carré had worked for MI5 and MI6 in his late twenties, during the Cold War, a period in which secret assassinations had been carried out by British intelligence. He quit MI6 in 1964 to become a full-time author of over 20 novels.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
tells how MI6’s lugubrious
George Smiley is brought out of retirement to identify the mole working at the heart of the Secret Intelligence Service. Smiley enlists the assistance of Guillam (Cumberbatch) to root out the enemy. Le Carré works have an abundance of figures with moral ambiguity, but Guillam was one character with a clear sense of right and wrong. ‘He sees what he is fighting for as the right and good cause,’ said Cumberbatch, ‘and, in a way, he wants to be part of something heroic, like the Hot War, where the lines were very clearly delineated and undivided.’

Ahead of filming, Cumberbatch undertook some typically unusual research in preparing for the part of Guillam. He flew to Morocco, his first holiday break alone. ‘I was in Essaouira. Because my character was a spy originally stationed in North Africa, I walked the streets alone at night, imagining what it was like for him – the oppressive doorways, the dark alleys.’

Alfredson had hired quite a cast: Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Ciaran Hinds, Kathy Burke. Cumberbatch was in awe of his co-stars – ‘That’s a call sheet I’m going to frame and keep for ever.’

Previewed at the Venice Film Festival in early September 2011,
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
opened in Britain two weeks later, and would subsequently win Best British Film at the 2012 BAFTA Awards. John le Carré gave the adaptation the warmest of blessings, calling it ‘a film that works superbly, and takes me back into byways of the characters that the series of 32 years ago didn’t enter.’ To those who believed that the remake was an act of heresy, especially in relation to
Gary Oldman succeeding Alec Guinness’s masterly portrayal of George Smiley, le Carré insisted: ‘If Alec had witnessed Oldman’s performance, he would have been the first to give it a standing ovation.’

He also felt that the tougher remake of his original story was a vital decision. ‘The television version was made, in a curious way, as a love story to a fading British Establishment. It was done with great nostalgia. The
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
that has now been made is without sentiment, sexier, grittier and crueller. It had to be.’ Part of the reason for the blunter tone was simply down to time. The BBC series had been a six-part serial. This was a mere two hours, what Gary Oldman described as ‘a real tightening of the screw’.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
was not the only film role Cumberbatch accepted while performing in Rattigan’s
After the Dance
. As the play neared the end of its run at the National Theatre, he was all set to take some time off. He told close friends that he was about to take a break, ‘unless Spielberg calls. A week later, I had to eat my words. Nobody will believe me, but there we are.’

On the day
After the Dance
closed, Cumberbatch met Steven Spielberg. The actor was late for their meeting, as he was unable to find a parking space for his motorbike, but this did not stop him landing a key role in the director’s next picture,
War Horse
. He couldn’t quite believe it. ‘It’s the standard actors’ joke – “What are you doing after this?”
“Oh, if Spielberg doesn’t call then I’m going to go on holiday”. But a week after I’d said that, I got the call to say I had the job. It’s one of those moments you never forget – I just fell off my chair.’

To be hired by Spielberg was such a thrill – ‘It was the most grown-up moment of my life. I was told I couldn’t tell anyone. I was walking around with this huge grin on my face and couldn’t speak with excitement.’ But he did give the esteemed director some advice about his character. ‘I told him that the officers mustn’t look like doomed upper-class fools, there has to be something heroic about their charge, and he agreed.’ For the mixture of ‘doomed and heroic’ in his own character of Major Jamie Stewart, Cumberbatch sought inspiration from
The Charge of the Light Brigade
’s Trevor Howard, aka Lord Cardigan. The versatile Howard had also been his muse while preparing to play David Scott-Fowler. ‘I could not believe it was the same actor,’ Cumberbatch told
The Sunday Times
.

It would appear that the Spielberg opportunity put paid to the chances of
After the Dance
transferring to Broadway. Cumberbatch had been asked to be part of the American run but the film opportunities coming his way made it an impossibility and so he declined and the project was dropped. ‘It was a shame there was never any talk of finding anyone else,’ said the Olivier-winning Nancy Carroll, who had played opposite him as Joan. ‘We all missed it.’

Yet for his part, Cumberbatch felt that going to Broadway he might miss out on cinematic opportunities – ‘I’ve never really made a head-over-heart decision like that before, but
there’s a bit of momentum and I’d like to keep myself available for films. Because I would like to sit at the big table.’ And it seemed a place had been set for him – by none other than Steven Spielberg.

Spielberg had been advised to see the National Theatre production of
War Horse
by his producer collaborator Kathleen Kennedy. It had been based on Michael Morpurgo’s 1982 book of the same name for children. He had written it after encountering veterans of the First World War in a pub. It tells the story from the viewpoint of Joey the colt, who is sold to the Army and used on the trenches as a packhorse.

On seeing the ambitious stage production, a dazzled Spielberg knew that it must be remade for cinema. The filmmaker had often used World War II as a backdrop to his projects (
Schindler’s List
and
Saving Private Ryan
), but had not yet done the same with World War I.
War Horse
would redress the balance, and for the first time since 1998’s
Saving Private Ryan
, a Spielberg film would be shot in the UK.

Spielberg did not want an ‘all-star cast’ for
War Horse
. He sought talented but relative unknowns, of the calibre of David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Peter Mullan and Benedict Cumberbatch. The central role of Albert Narracott, a farmhand in Devon who searches for his colt, Joey, in France’s killing fields and who pretends to be older in order to enlist for service, would be filled by a young actor called Jeremy Irvine. Much fêted for his work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Youth Theatre, Irvine was relatively unknown to most of the general public and the international film world. The film would reunite
Cumberbatch with his old school friend Patrick Kennedy (for the first time since
Atonement
), but the real star of the film, in his opinion, was Joey the colt, ‘half a tonne of 35mph joy’.

After Spielberg had made visits to the Imperial War Museum in South London to conduct background research, shooting began on
War Horse
in the late summer of 2010. An adaptation was written by Lee Hall and Richard Curtis, the latter hired after Spielberg happened to watch a repeat of the TV series
Blackadder Goes Forth
, also set during the First World War.

As the moustachioed cavalry officer Major Jamie Stewart, Cumberbatch was playing a part which required him to ride a horse, something he had not done since the age of twelve. ‘I saw the storyboards, and nearly shat myself. Some extremely good horsemanship is going to be required, and I’m hoping they won’t be relying entirely on me.’ At least he wouldn’t be participating in the more hazardous sequences, though. For those, he would replaced by a stunt double.

His first day on the
War Horse
set took place in August 2010, just days after
Sherlock
debuted on television. The first scene shot was a battle sequence, of a cavalry charge against German troops. ‘It was a hell of a way to start. It was a screaming charge and not breathing for what felt like five minutes, though it was probably two and a half, and nearly fainting.’ Relations between the man and his horse mostly went well. ‘The trust forms through proximity… giving him his hay bag, washing him down, being close and touching. He’s so calm, he starts falling asleep on my sleeve.’

Working on
War Horse
made Cumberbatch understand a
little better the experiences of British troops stationed in Afghanistan. ‘The First World War is obviously very different,’ he conceded, ‘but I did get an awareness of the sheer numbers of men on the ground fighting for a common purpose and for freedom, and although the mechanism of the two wars is different, the spirit is the same.’

It was while on the set of
War Horse
that Cumberbatch was to unwittingly stumble into the frame for a future television role. The veteran playwright Sir Tom Stoppard was returning to the medium for the first time in nearly 30 years, writing an adaptation of a long-forgotten series of novels from the 1920s. Stoppard saw him dressed as Major Stewart, and held back from saying a word – for now. ‘I was in First World War clobber,’ said Cumberbatch, ‘although I was thin and moustachioed and ginger for that part.’ What Stoppard had in mind for him was a role from the same time period, but a very different sort of character.

I
t was clear to Benedict Cumberbatch that a factor in his success was the perception that he was from a relatively privileged background, and had landed many roles of that type. ‘I was brought up in a world of privilege,’ he told the
Radio Times
in December 2011. ‘Being a posh actor in England, you can’t escape class-typing. I realised quite early on that, although I wasn’t trying to make a career speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals.’ Proud as he was of his achievements, he maintained that typecasting was a hazard and a trap for the long-term career. ‘The further away you can get from yourself, the more challenging it is. Not to be in your comfort zone is such great fun.’

It was hard for Cumberbatch to shake off the ‘posh’ tag. His itinerary through the English public school system meant he had the posh accent to go with it, and he had spent some
time trying to tone it down. ‘My voice is way too posh,’ he once protested. ‘We’re not even a very posh family.’

Many early roles that brought him to prominence did little to challenge the perception of him as posh, something he was happy to concede, at least to begin with. ‘I was a priggish shit in
To the Ends of the Earth
, and I was a priggish shit in
Starter for 10
,’ he chuckled disarmingly in 2007, ‘and who knows, that could be my lot. I can’t deny I lack knowledge of that type.’ After all, ‘I went to Harrow.’

Later, he would grow increasingly frustrated with the stereotype. He didn’t want to be complacent, nor to be typecast. ‘That’s the thing I’ve been kicking against,’ he said, ‘to try and shift class and period and perception all the time.’

If he wasn’t being cast as someone posh, it was as someone clever or creative: scientists, mathematicians, artists. With each part, he conducted extensive background research. ‘I suppose it’s flattering that you look like someone who could think this stuff. But it’s a confidence trick. You’re actually someone who, before shooting begins, has desperately been mugging up on the books he half-finished during gap year.’

What he truly had no time for was a cultural world that was for the financially comfortable – ‘I don’t want it to be only the sons and daughters of Tory MPs who get to see my plays. I’m interested in art for all.’ He was opposed to the coalition government’s proposed cuts on arts funding. ‘People are going to be shocked at how it will affect the volume of output and choice that they’re used to at the moment. The Arts provide a massive return of revenue, employment and hold national prestige.’

Given his public school background, it was only a matter of time before Cumberbatch would be drawn into the evergreen debate about the British class system. As cuts to the Arts sector were proposed, could it be that acting might only be a career option for those with moneyed
backgrounds
? It was striking that in the twenty-first century, many of the most prominent and in-demand British actors had been educated via the public school system. The Old Etonian Eddie Redmayne had been a contemporary of Prince William. Dominic West, another Eton boy, had been at school with Prime Minister David Cameron. Then there was Tom Hiddleston, Damian Lewis (both Eton), and so the list went on.

Cumberbatch also may have had a slight advantage over others, given that both his parents had been successful actors for many years. But what of opportunities for actors who had neither wealth, nor privileged education, nor family connections behind them? It is hard for many actors to make a living wage. Equity, the performers’ union, estimates that at any one time, some two-thirds of actors are unemployed. How can those with little or no money survive in such a precarious profession?

Rob James-Collier, Thomas the footman in
Downton Abbey
, would reignite the ongoing debate about class in the acting profession. The Stockport-born actor told the
Radio Times
in March 2012 that he had no ‘posh’ leanings and said that getting a professional foothold in acting was hard without money behind you. ‘You have to work for a year with no money. How on earth are you going to finance that?’
It was not unlike the internships of other professions that, if unpaid, would be only available to those from wealthy families. Prior to landing a part in
Coronation Street
,
James-Collier
had supported himself in the hunt for acting jobs by working in factories and as a labourer. ‘Because you’ve done the horrible jobs it gives you an even grittier determination to succeed. If I had a comfort blanket, I wouldn’t have been as passionate and driven. When you get there, you really do appreciate it because you know where you’ve been.’

Louise Brealey, who as pathologist Molly Hooper appeared alongside Cumberbatch in
Sherlock
, still juggled acting with journalism and TV producing. In arts and media, she argued, those from affluent backgrounds were at an advantage. ‘It’s getting more difficult all the time for kids from poorer backgrounds to break in, because you’re expected to work for nothing in endless internships. Without someone bankrolling you, that’s impossible. The upshot is that working-class voices will be heard even less frequently than they are already.’

It did seem as if, bar the soaps such as
Emmerdale, Coronation Street
and
EastEnders
, popular blue-collar dramas had faded from most peak-time TV. The
Radio Times
’ Gareth McLean wondered if there could ever be modern-day reflections of working-class Britain like
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Clocking Off
or
Boys from the Blackstuff
. ‘Where are those shows now?’ McLean wrote. ‘The only time you see working-class life on TV is when they go back to people’s houses on
The X Factor
or
Britain’s Got Talent
.’

But Cumberbatch dismissed claims that there was any kind
of ‘private school elite’ in acting. He described himself as ‘definitely middle-class’. ‘People have tried to pull together a pattern,’ he told the
Mail on Sunday
in May 2013, ‘because Tom Hiddleston, Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis and I were all privately educated. But James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender and Tom Hardy weren’t, and they’re equally talented. It’s just lazy.’

It’s considered bad form to complain if you’re both famous and wealthy, and if you weren’t poor to start with, that’s even worse. Cumberbatch felt he couldn’t win, when it came to discussing his origins: ‘You either come across as being arrogant and ungrateful if you complain about it, or being snooty and overprivileged if you bathe in it.’

On the face of it, a five-part television drama series called
Parade’s End
did little to alter the perception of Cumberbatch as one of the screen’s top portrayers of the upper-middle class and above. It was set in Edwardian England around the time of the outbreak of the First World War, and he played a government statistician called Christopher Tietjens, with Rebecca Hall co-starring as his socialite wife Sylvia. As Sylvia begins an extra-marital affair, he falls for a free-spirited suffragette called Valentine Wannop, played by the Australian Adelaide Clemens. Based on material from a set of four novels written by Ford Madox Ford in the 1920s, it was adapted by Sir Tom Stoppard, his first contribution to television drama in nearly 30 years.

Cumberbatch felt a special kind of connection towards Christopher Tietjens, a physically cumbersome and emotionally undemonstrative Yorkshireman whose quiet
loyalty, intelligence and patriotism he found truly heroic and inspirational. ‘He’s not just another toff in a period drama,’ he said. ‘I have such a huge affection for Christopher – more so than almost any other character I’ve played. I sympathise with his care, his sense of duty and virtue, his intelligence in the face of hypocritical, self-serving mediocrity and his love for his country. That is what leads me to love this fat, baggy bolster of a blockhead.’

He later said that he had based his visual interpretation of the character (as a ‘very intelligent but rather oafish buffoon’) on Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, who had a habit of making gaffes during speeches, a trait that endeared him to some, but not to others. To fill out for the part, he needed to put on a fair bit of weight. ‘There was a lot of rubbish food and drinking alcohol without worrying about it… lots of beer, wine, chips, the most amazing proper steaks and goulashes.’

But he was advised not to over-egg the Borisisms. ‘They stopped me going the whole hog because they wanted a
pin-up
. He’s got to be seen as sexually attractive, or why would someone as beautiful as Valentine fall for him?’ The onscreen chemistry between her and Christopher would indeed be intense. ‘He is so inspiring and overwhelming in the best possible way,’ Adelaide Clemens gushed of her
co-star
. ‘We were feeding each other’s curiosity. He is so in control of his craft.’

Though he shared the icy-cold wit of Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes, Tietjens was a much more considered and stately thinker, someone who doesn’t reach rapid
conclusions, but who seems to already possess inbuilt wisdom. Although the man originated in a quartet of novels relatively few had read, the obscurity of the character was advantageous for Cumberbatch. He saw the role as a blank canvas, and an opportunity to make the part his own. He had also vowed to avoid upper-class British characters for a time, feeling that he was in danger of being typecast, and being too associated with such figures. But Tietjens was too much of a temptation to turn down. He accepted the challenge.

Parade’s End
had been adapted for television once before – as one of the earliest dramas made for the BBC’s second TV channel, BBC2. It aired in December 1964, with Ronald Hines as Tietjens, and a young Judi Dench as Valentine. BBC Radio 3 had mounted a production in 2003, with Tom Goodman-Hill as Tietjens. The plans for the new version were officially announced in September 2011, around a year before broadcast. Comparisons were immediately drawn between it and the ITV series
Downton Abbey
– which had launched in 2010, and had become one of the network’s biggest drama hits in years. On the face of it, the two series did indeed share certain similarities. Both were set around the same time – namely the period before and during the First World War – and both dealt with social tensions surrounding the English aristocracy.

Parade’s End
’s producers insisted any similarities were superficial and coincidental, especially as the concept for the series had been hatched some time before
Downton Abbey
had reached the screen.

‘I can honestly say,’ said executive producer Damien Timmer, ‘that we started off doing this before any of us had ever heard about
Downton Abbey
.’ ‘Just because things are set in a similar period,’ argued Ben Stephenson, drama head at the BBC, where a TV version of Sebastian Faulks’ WWI novel
Birdsong
was also in the pipeline, ‘doesn’t mean that they are the same.’

Sir Tom Stoppard had finished writing his adaptation of
Parade’s End
in 2009, a year before
Downton Abbey
launched. Stoppard was in no doubt as to why the Edwardian period was so fascinating for millions of viewers a century later. ‘It was the last period of social history among the top half of the English class system. In the case of 1914 [the outbreak of World War I], there is a sense of an important page being turned, never to be turned back again.’
Parade’s End
contained many themes like post-war trauma, shell-shock and remembrance of lives lost that would remain relevant in the twenty-first century.

Ford Madox Ford, the author of the original novels, had himself served in World War I. Born in 1873 in Surrey as Ford Hermann Hueffer, he had a German father, but changed his name just after World War I as he felt it sounded too German. The four novels he wrote between 1924 and 1928 and covering the period 1912 to the early 1920s, and later favourites of Anthony Burgess and Graham Greene, did not lend themselves easily to visual adaptation. They were modernist, bordering on experimental, and many of the themes and treatments would be hard to transfer directly. ‘You have the problem that there’s a lot of interesting stuff
going on in the novel,’ Tom Stoppard added, ‘without necessarily having the dramatic momentum or even the physical concrete dimension to it.’ Stoppard confessed to being a little out of date on the matter of writing for television. He hadn’t written anything for the medium since the BBC’s
Squaring the Circle
in 1984 – ‘I write talkies. I wrote
Parade’s End
in the same spirit as I write stage plays.’

The main reason for the delay in bringing
Parade’s End
to life as a television series was mostly a financial one. With a star-studded cast including Anne-Marie Duff, Miranda Richardson and Rupert Everett, as well as old friends and colleagues of Cumberbatch’s such as Roger Allam, Rebecca Hall and Patrick Kennedy, the sheer cost of the lavish project required international backing. There were over 100 speaking parts, and nearly 150 different locations (from Yorkshire to Belgium), a vast number for a five-part television series. Eventually, HBO, the American cable network, and home to
The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, The Wire
and
Curb Your Enthusiasm
, agreed to co-fund with the BBC. The total bill for the series was around £12 million, the most expensive drama series yet made for BBC2.

Cumberbatch was formally offered the part of Tietjens in early 2011, and filming began in the late summer of that year. One location shoot took place in Belgium, at Ypres, site of some of the most intense battles of the First World War. ‘When I got into the trench, with one of those tin hats on,’ Cumberbatch recalled, ‘I realised you’re standing basically in a grave. Everything above you is exploding and anything over the edge is death. With the tin trench helmet on, you hardly
see any sky. The practicality of just moving around was hard enough and you’re supposed to be a fighting machine. Going up a ladder knowing you are walking into gunfire goes against every instinct of what it is to be a human being.’