Benedict Cumberbatch. Matt Winkelmeyer/WireImage
Benedict Cumberbatch was fundamentally changed after he was the victim of an alleged robbery and abduction.
“It gave me a sense of time, but not necessarily a good one,” Cumberbatch, 48, told Variety in a profile published on Wednesday, January 22. “It made me impatient to live a life less ordinary, and I’m still dealing with that impatience.”
The actor was filming BBC’s To The Ends of the Earth in South Africa in 2004 when he went on a diving excursion with a group of friends. Their tire blew out on the way home, leading the group to pull over on the side of the road. They were then allegedly robbed and abducted by six men. According to Variety, Cumberbatch and his acquaintances were forced into a vehicle and driven around for hours.
The suspects eventually let Cumberbatch and his peers out of the car, making them sit execution-style with their hands tied up. The group was still seated as the assailants fled. Cumberbatch, for his part, was in his early 20s at the time.
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Upon his eventual release, Cumberbatch became an adrenaline junkie.
“The near-death stuff turbo-fueled all that. It made me go, ‘Oh, right, yeah, I could die at any moment,’” he recalled to the outlet. “I was throwing myself out of planes, taking all sorts of risks. But apart from my parents, I didn’t have any real dependents at that point. Now that’s changed, and that sobers you. I’ve looked over the edge; it’s made me comfortable with what lies beneath it. And I’ve accepted that that’s the end of all our stories.”
Ten years later in 2015, Cumberbatch married Sophie Hunter before they went on to welcome three sons.
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“The minute you have kids this sense of time sinks in far more profoundly,” Cumberbatch told Variety. “My youngest is turning 6 tomorrow, and I’m like, ‘I will be in my 60s when he’s 21,’ you know? It’s crazy. It’s gone so fast. So there’s a huge shift in priorities, and it makes you value what you do with your life in a very different way.”
He added, “It does weigh on me. When you become a parent, your thoughts turn more towards mortality.”
Parenthood has also inspired Cumberbatch to continue taking risks in his acting career.
“There’s nothing wrong with saying, ‘I really want to try to craft something together.’ It’s all about perception,” the Doctor Stranger star said. “It’s about becoming comfortable saying, ‘I’m an artist rather than, you know, a bit of meat for hire.’ After all, time is running out.”