Celebrated actor Benedict Cumberbatch would like everyone to know that — while his acting is for public consumption and entertainment — his family is not.
Cumberbatch recently got very candid on how he feels about self-proclaimed Cumberbitches, and revealed he considers their at times frightening behavior a huge dark side of fame — especially since he is now a married man and has a small child.
“There are people who believe that my wife is a PR stunt and my child is a PR stunt,” Cumberbatch said in an interview for the November issue of Vanity Fair. “I think really it’s to do with the idea that the ‘Internet’s boyfriend’ can’t actually belong to anyone else but the Internet. It’s impossible he belongs to anyone but me. And that’s what stalking is. That’s what obsessive, deluded, really scary behavior is.”
Cumberbatch also admitted that the birth of his son, Christopher, has turned him into a papa bear and made him even more aware of the craziness of the internet and celebrity.
“Having a baby — it’s massive,” he said. “And on a very unexpected level. Suddenly I understood my parents much more profoundly than I ever had before.”
Although Cumberbatch is extremely protective of his family’s treatment online, he takes a bit more of a lighthearted — and humble — approach when it comes to hordes of fans ogling him as a sex symbol. He seems in awe and embarrassed of all the adoration, especially when it comes to tweets like this:
Sometimes when I'm sad I picture a shirtless Benedict.Cumberbatch slowly eating.an apple fritter. Try it!
— yedid (@shoesyedid115) September 27, 2023
“Have you tried that? It wouldn’t work for me,” he joked about the apple fritter tweet. “I’m glad I’m bringing a ray of sunshine to an otherwise dull day, being imagined eating fritters shirtless. But, I don’t know, it makes me giggle. I don’t look at myself in the mirror and go, ‘Yeah, absolutely! I see what they’re saying!’ I see all my faults and everything that I’ve always seen as my faults.”
Aw, but isn’t that sweetness mixed with the hard edge of protecting his family exactly why we love him so much? Well, that and the fact he is so damn gorgeous, no matter how coy he plays it.
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