Benedict Cumberbatch by Justin Lewis Page B

the part from several contemporaries from his younger days. ‘He is an amalgamation of a lot of people I was at school with and people I felt a little bit sorry for at university. They are always there at the freshers’ fair, wearing a tie, bless them.’ As ever, when Cumberbatch played someone irritating or arrogant, he avoided anytemptation to make them one-dimensional caricatures of ‘poshness’, and always took care to render them more complex and human.
    Nowadays, Jeremy Paxman urges dithering contestants on
University Challenge
to ‘come on!’, but for 25 years, its quizmaster was Bamber Gascoigne, who preferred the gentler, almost apologetic murmur of ‘Must hurry you’. Gascoigne was played in
Starter for 10
– with quite unerring accuracy – by Mark Gatiss, a founder member of
The League of Gentlemen
, and a man who would a few years later be instrumental in Cumberbatch’s career.
    While the American funding for
Starter for 10
enabled the film to be made in the first place (Tom Hanks was one of the producers), Cumberbatch felt a little uneasy with the editorial interference that could come from the backing. ‘American investment comes with editorial control. That side of your industry worries me. In a comedy drama about
University Challenge
, who cares that they might not understand what Heinz ketchup means?’
    Cumberbatch and McAvoy quickly became good friends, and the pair had various adventures and misadventures when the cameras stopped rolling. At one point in 2006, they had defied the elements and walked up the highest peaks of the Brecon Beacons in mid-Wales, but had started their journey far too late in the day after an extended lunch during which Cumberbatch had consumed a large steak-and -kidney pie in Hay-on-Wye. ‘It was fucking hilarious,’ McAvoy told the
Observer
newspaper. ‘We finally started walking up Pen-Y-Fan at half past three. And of course thecloud came down.’ A somewhat bloated Cumberbatch, with a bellyful of pie, protested. ‘But I thought: Ben, I am not stopping because of your bloody pie. We kept walking and ended up with 5ft visibility.’
    McAvoy and Cumberbatch would again play lead and supporting role respectively in
Atonement
, Joe Wright’s big-screen treatment of Ian McEwan’s novel. Cumberbatch played a creepy confectionery businessman called Paul Marshall, one of the least likeable characters he would ever portray.
Atonement
opened in British cinemas in September 2007, and was soon followed in 2008 by
The Other Boleyn Girl
. Based on the historical novel by Philippa Gregory, this was a drama about Anne Boleyn’s sister Mary, about whom relatively little was known. Here, Cumberbatch was cast as a merchant’s son William Carey, who marries Mary (Scarlett Johansson). The role required him to take part in a wedding night bedroom scene with Johansson. He helpfully summarised the shoot for the
Daily Telegraph
. It sounded underwhelming and bathetic. ‘I get on top of her and go “Ooh!” Knuckles whiten and I roll over, say “Thank you” and start snoring.’ A sex scene lasting seconds. ‘I guess it’s what any man would suffer,’ he later shrugged, ‘when faced with beauty that intense.’
    Larger roles had also come his way. In 2005, he had landed the part of William Pitt the Younger, who in 1783 had become – at the age of just 24 – the youngest man ever to be British Prime Minister. It was all part of a feature film called
Amazing Grace
, which told how William Wilberforce campaigned to abolish slavery in Britain. During theseventeenth and eighteenth centuries, an estimated 11 million men, women and children had been sold into the barbaric and undignified world of slavery, but it took over two decades for Wilberforce’s campaign to succeed. The film’s title came from the famous hymn of the same name, one of many penned by John Newton, formerly captain of a slave ship who on becoming a clergyman saw the light and was also instrumental in the