Upper class to me means you are either born into wealth or you're Royalty.

When you're a kid, 'Star Trek' is a slower burn. It's funny, it's entertaining, but it also has a maturity about it - which is its universal appeal, I think.

I got live tweeted once by someone who was opposite my home in some rented accommodation. He was actually describing on twitter what I was doing. 'I took a shirt off, I went to the window, I put a shirt back on... ' And I've got blinds in my flat!

If people ask, 'Are you Sherlock Holmes?', it's horribly naff, but I say, 'I'm not, I just look a bit like him' - which is how I feel. There are bad attributes of his that I really don't share!

Our daily lives are so mundane, we get taken over by what is immediately in front of us and we don't see beyond that.

It'd be really nice to wake up looking like, I don't know, Jake Gyllenhaal and think, 'Let's try this on for a day and see how it feels.'

Any privacy in public is a hard thing to negotiate.

I haven't done period dramas back-to-back, or really anything back-to-back. You get asked to do what you're most recently famed for, so I'm careful of not repeating myself.

Do awards change careers? Well, I haven't heard of many stories where that's the case. It's a fun excuse to meet colleagues and celebrate people who've done well that year in certain people's eyes, and it's nothing more than that.

I'll always do 'Sherlock' - it's something I'm not going to give up on.

When you see a good horseman, you're unable to tell where the instruction is coming from. It's like telepathy.

I was happy as an only child, but I've always wanted to be part of a bigger family.

Do I like being thought of as attractive? I don't know anyone on Earth who doesn't, but I do find it funny.

I'm not confident in social situations; just going up to someone in a bar and saying 'Hi' is going to be even more difficult because they won't know the real me. They will just know me as a fictional person I play on the screen.

Mum did a lot of commercial theatre and farces in the 1980s and '90s to make sure the school bills were paid.

There's a huge raft of roles that actors in our culture perform, and you can see any one of about three Hamlets in a year. It's not something to be completely daunted by.

I love theatre, and you learn too much as an actor and enjoy too much of it not to want to go back a lot.

'Sherlock' fans are, by and large, an intelligent breed, so they've gone through my back catalogue and got what I've done, why and how I've done it. There is some obsessive behaviour, but I worry for them rather than me.

I wasn't born into land or titles, or new money, or an oil rig.

Fame is a weird one. You need to distance yourself from it. People see a value in you that you don't see yourself.

When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don't really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it's not fair that others aren't doing exactly what you're doing. I do have that.

The number of people my age, younger now, a whole generation younger, who are fiercely bright, over-educated, under-employed and who are politicised and purposeless really upsets me. It's soul-destroying.

When you freefall for 7,000 feet it doesn't feel like you're falling: it feels like you're floating, a bit like scuba diving.

I had a real yearning to make use of the opportunities I had at school. When I heard about the gap year of teaching English at a Tibetan monastery, I knew I had to do something about it really quickly, otherwise it was going to get allocated.

New York City is crazy and beautiful and really close to my heart, and I've always had dear friends here - family, actually, I would say.

'Benedict' means 'blessed.' My parents liked the sound of the name and felt slightly blessed because they'd been trying for a child for a very long time.

I did a lot of acting at school and university, then I went to drama school. It was quite a normal route.

The armoury of having any academic education does not necessarily set you up for being a good or better actor.

I never was obsessive about anything I watched when I was a kid, except maybe 'The A-Team' and 'Airwolf'... And I loved 'Knight Rider' and then later 'Baywatch.'

My first, big, silly role at school was as Arthur Crocker-Harris in Rattigan's 'The Browning Version,' where my job was to make school-masters' wives weep with recognition.

As an actor, you are aware of how a role can seep into your real life.

Metaphorically speaking, it's easy to bump into one another on the journey from A to B and not even notice. People should take time to notice, enjoy and help each other.

Landing the role of Stephen Hawking was the most positively surprising thing that has happened to me.

Enjoy the journey of life and not just the endgame.

It is a wonderful thing to get married young and become a father.

A woman who knows that she doesn't have to get all decked out to look good is sexy. A woman who can make you feel smart with her conversation skills is also sexy. I believe the sense of humor is important.

Mystique is rare now, isn't it? There aren't that many enigmas in this modern world.

I am a PR disaster because I talk too much.

The more charming person is the person who admits the other person is more charming.

I wish my 15-year-old self had known about my allure to the opposite sex!

I'm quite sensitive to people noticing me. There are times when I'm relaxed, then others when it does make me self-conscious.

When are you ever settled enough to have kids?

Live a life less ordinary.

I'm interested in art for all. I don't want it to be only the sons and daughters of Tory MPs who get to see my plays.

There's so much in the 21st century that is stymied by bureaucracy and mediocrity and committee.

People's hands fascinate me. It's tempting to look at a businessman's left hand and see if there's an indentation from a missing wedding ring. Or maybe there's a tan line and the skin is pressed down where's he's worked a ring off his finger.

My first agent dissuaded me from calling myself 'Cumberbatch.' I had six months of not very productive time with her, so I changed agents. The new one said, 'Why aren't you using your family name? It's a real attention-grabber.' I worried, 'How much is it going to cost to put my name in lights?' But then I decided that's not my problem.

There's no shame in stealing - any actor who says he doesn't is lying. You steal from everything.

If I'd had fame early on, I'd have been able to abuse it in the way that a young man should.

The world of 'Sherlock Holmes' and the world that we live in now is big enough to take more than one interpretation.