Benedict Cumberbatch Read Online Free Page B

later reflected that he lacked focus in his final year at Harrow (1994–95). He confessed that, now eighteen years old, he had preferred ‘pot and girls and music’ to studying. But there still seemed to be no let-up when it came to other extra-curricular activities. In sport, he had drifted from rugby and cricket to abseiling, and had become a mainstay of the school’s paragliding regiment. He was still fanatical about art – ‘My canvases were the walls of deserted squash courts. Where else would you be indulged like that?’– and in February 1995, a ‘huge scissors sculpture in metal and string’ he had made helped The Park win a House Art Competition at the school.
    But inevitably it was as a stage presence where Benedict Cumberbatch had made his greatest impact at Harrow. One of six departing pupils of 1995 to receive an Evelyn de Rothschild Leaving Scholarship, he was singled out for greatness in July of that year by the headmaster in an end- of-term speech. While Nicholas Bomford acknowledged that it was ‘invidious to pick out boys for special mention when so much has been achieved as a result of collective endeavour’, there was no escaping that even as a team player, Ben Cumberbatch was emerging as a star. His performances on stage, said Bomford, ‘will long be remembered by those lucky enough to have seen them.’ Drama tutor Martin Tyrell would later describe him as ‘the best schoolboy actor I’ve ever worked with’.
    What to do next? He had considered law as a possible profession. For his parents, jittery about the insecurity of the acting profession, this would have been a relief. ‘A lot of people told me that barristers never knew where their next job was coming from, and that you had to trek all over the country, and it was very hard work. It sounded a bit like acting, so I stuck with that instead.’ It also occurred to him that his reasons for chasing the law as a career lay in acting anyway. He was a big fan of John Mortimer’s
Rumpole of the Bailey
on television, starring Leo McKern. Had he just wanted to study law so he could become Horace Rumpole?
    He finally abandoned any aspirations to work in legalcircles when he visited the law department at Manchester University. He changed his mind; other law students reminded him of ‘the living dead’, and above all he realised his attempts to change career had been to ‘show off to my parents that I was capable of that’. Pursuing an acting career would be precarious and unpredictable, but so could just about any other career. His five years inside ‘an incredibly privileged bubble’ at Harrow School had left him in no doubt about what he really wanted to do: he wanted to be an actor, just like his parents.

CHAPTER 3
BIG WIDE WORLD
    W ith Benedict at Harrow, Wanda and Tim had increased their stage work commitments. In 1991, for the first time in 20 years, they appeared together in a touring production of the Ray Cooney farce,
Out of Order
. In its West End run, the play won the Olivier Theatre Award for Best Comedy. The couple would also be regulars in three series of the BBC sitcom,
Next of Kin
, with Penelope Keith and William Gaunt. In 1997, having played Cassandra’s mum in
Only Fools and Horses
, Wanda would appear as the mum of Deborah (Leslie Ash) in another hit sitcom,
Men Behaving Badly
. But most of their work would be in the theatre now. Their son would come and watch them perform, often with increasing discomfort as his mum especially would play roles requiring her to be in some or other compromising position. ‘I had to say to her, sorryMum, I just can’t bear to see that gag one more time. I was so sensitive to it, she must have wondered if I was gay.’
    After leaving Harrow in the summer of 1995, Benedict took a year out before university. He wanted to spend some time abroad, and in order to fund his trip spent around six months working in a London perfumier. The second half of his gap year found him in Darjeeling,