Benedict Cumberbatch recounts his kidnapping in South Africa

A chilling story. Benedict Cumberbatch shared anecdotes from filming during an interview with Varietyon Wednesday January 22 at the Sundance Film Festival, where he came to present the film The Thing with Feather. The 48-year-old actor notably returned to the kidnapping of which he was a victim in South Africa in 2004, while he was playing in the mini-series To the Ends of the Earth.

At the time, 27 years old, Benedict Cumberbatch, accompanied by two friends, went diving. While driving home, a tire blew. When they were changing it, the small group was attacked by six men, who robbed it. The thugs then kidnapped them, forcing them to drive them for hours. A run at the end of which the kidnappers take them out of the car tied up, as if to execute them, before fleeing. “I was scared, really scared,” Benedict Cumberbatch told Hollywood Reporter in 2013. I asked them: “What are you going to do with us? Are you going to kill us?” I was afraid they would rape me or beat me or torture me.”

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A notable episode

This experience changed the life of the British actor and producer. “It gave me the notion of time, but not in the right way,” he explains in the columns of Variety. Before adding: “It made me want to live a less ordinary life, and since then I have always been confronted with this impatience.” The interpreter of Doctor Strange even described this moment as a “near death experience”, which “boosted” him to skydive, one of his hobbies now.

“I thought, ‘Oh, that’s right, I could die at any moment,’” he said. So I threw myself out of a plane (with a parachute, Editor’s note), I took all kinds of risks. But other than my parents, I didn’t really have any dependents at that time. Now it’s changed, and it makes you think.” Now married to Sophie Hunter since 2015, he is the father of three sons.