Benedict Cumberbatch sweeps into an empty hotel ballroom, cutting a natty figure in a black-and-white glen plaid jacket, checked shirt and striped canvas sneakers. "I see you have your festival bag," he says confidingly, taking note of the crumpled Toronto International Film Festival tote at an interlocutor's feet. It's a substitute for the one that broke at customs, overstuffed with a laptop and sundry travel necessities.

"That's exactly what happens to me," he offers enthusiastically. "Because I'm packing all the time. I'm always killing really perfectly good bits of luggage by shoving loads of stuff in them, and then the seams break, handles drop off, you know."

A Cult Heart-throb

Sure, we know. But, let it be stipulated, no one can really know what it's like to be Cumberbatch, who has had a year that has been, well, especially packed. The 37-year-old Brit, who has been a cult heart-throb among the PBS-BBC- plummy -literary-adaptation set, played the Necromancer in last year's Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. But he truly burst into mass popular consciousness this past summer, when he thoroughly dominated the role of Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness. On Oct. 18, he will star as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in The Fifth Estate and has supporting roles in two high-profile films arriving soon: 12 Years a Slave, directed by Steve McQueen, and August: Osage County, adapted from Tracy Letts's Pulitzer Prize-winning play.

"A packed year, exactly," Cumberbatch says with a reflective sigh. "It's been amazing. It's been amazing. But two years really, because Trek we filmed the beginning of last year, and before that—God, it winds back quite a ways. I mean, literally, just sort of the height of what I could ever imagine myself being asked to do as an actor has been going on pretty much now for about four or five years."

Cumberbatch speaks at a breathless clip , his words spilling out in a joyous, oncoming rush that suggests he really is thrilled to be here, however tempting it would be to read his gee-whiz protestations as the practiced act of a canny ingenue . He is, quite simply—and this is for all those self-proclaimed Cumberbitches out there who have designated him an unlikely pin-up idol—just as chiseled , engaging, well-mannered and disarmingly modest as they imagine in their wintry, wind-tossed fantasies.

A Born Actor

He comes by it honestly. Cumberbatch is the son of two actors—Timothy Carlton and Wanda Ventham—who grew up in London and is as at home in the posh precincts of Burke's Peerage (an ancestor was a consul under Queen Victoria) as in the klieg-lighted world of Show People. (So how did Cumberbatch end up with his last name? It was his father's surname; Carlton a middle name turned stage name. So Benedict has simply reclaimed the family name.) But his career has followed contours that even his parents couldn't prepare him for. He's done high-profile work in such highly regarded films as Atonement, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and War Horse, as well as on television, in Hawking, Sherlock and Parade's End. He's a celebrated figure of the London stage: In 2010 he earned kudos for his performance in a revival of Terence Rattigan's After the Dance, and the following year he won an Olivier Award , for his work in an experimental version of Frankenstein, adapted by Danny Boyle. It was After the Dance, he says, that marked the turning point when the phone started ringing. It hasn't stopped.

"I knew when I started out that I wanted something very different from what Mom and Dad had anyway, but I didn't know quite what—I didn't know how it would manifest—but even they look at it and go, 'Whoa,' " Cumberbatch says. "It's beyond everyone's sort of expectation. But also the workload and everything, it's different to their game."

It's enough to turn a boy's head . But Cumberbatch, along with such contemporaries as Michael Fassbender , is forging the kind of career that actors covet these days, combining recurring roles in huge franchises like Star Trek and The Hobbit. His role model, he says, is James McAvoy (his one-time co-star in Starter for 10), who along with Fassbender appears in the X-Men movies.

A Practiced Shape-shifter

"Quite interesting" is an understatement when it comes to Cumberbatch's work, which has found him slipping into personae and physical types with the ease of a practiced shape-shifter. Nowhere are his skills in finer form than The Fifth Estate, in which he seamlessly masters Assange's signature Australian accent, lisp and fey , look-at-me-don't-look-at-me demeanor (admittedly with the help of a blond wig). Early in the process of making The Fifth Estate, Cumberbatch e-mailed Assange hoping that they could meet. He got no response until the day before shooting began, when Assange sent the actor an email begging him not to do the film.

"I was just doing the last fittings for the wig and makeup and stuff, and this very erudite, charming and lucid and intelligent e-mail [arrived], imploring my better nature to step away from the project that he thought would be abhorrent and damaging to his cause," Cumberbatch recalls. "It was a very powerful thing to suddenly land in your inbox."

Cumberbatch wrote Assange back. "And my response was equally as considered and I hope as charming. I completely respected his point of view, but I really tried to illustrate for him two things: one is that this film is not a documentary; it's not a piece of evidence admissible in a court of law, not a factual entity that shifts perceptions or point of view of being the truth; it is a truth.

"Secondly—well, actually, there are three points. Secondly, it is just a film. It's not going to be able to shift perception. It's a film of its own genre [that's] not going to be The Hobbit or Star Trek. It's not going to have a massively popular tidal-wave effect. I really want people to see it, but his fear of it being some mass propaganda tool that's going to damage him was really overstretching the point. And thirdly and most importantly, it was never going to be antithetical to his point of view or vilify him. No one was interested in portraying something that was going to tell the audience what to think."

One result of the exchange was that Cumberbatch became something of Assange's advocate on the set, demanding that his point of view be aired when others had had their say. (The Fifth Estate is based on the accounts of two disaffected former Assange colleagues, Daniel Domscheit-Berg and Guardian investigative journalist David Leigh.) "It was great, because it was sort of like having Julian there," says The Fifth Estate director Bill Condon. "This was a movie where there was more conversation about the context of scenes than almost any I've done, which was really stimulating. Because it forced you to look for the 10th, 11th, 12th time at the validity of what you were dramatizing."

Cumberbatch admits now that he was "really kind of winded" by Assange's last-minute plea. Condon recalls his frustration at not being able to stop the correspondence, which was clearly rattling his leading man. "I realized what an unfair position it put him in, in a way he didn't even understand. Can you imagine? It's almost like being schizophrenic. Because you're walking around thinking like a person who's also saying, 'Don't be me.' I've talked to him about it and he said, 'I wanted to take that on because it's part of understanding his predicament.' I think he's right, but I still feel like I saw the torment that it put him through."

Now, a few days after The Fifth Estate made its world premiere as the opening night film in Toronto, Cumberbatch shows no sign of torment. Far from it. One minute he's fondly recalling how he danced with Fassbender (a.k.a. "Fassy") at the 12 Years a Slave party the night before; the next, he's sharing warm memories of living in Los Angeles while filming Star Trek, hanging with best friend Adam Ackland (grandson of actor Joss), lifelong mate Tertius Bune and Starter for 10 and Trek co-star Alice Eve. He'11 be flying back to London soon to begin rehearsals with Keira Knightley for The Imitation Game, about encryption specialist Alan Turing ; he's also agreed to star in the action adventure The Lost City of Z, produced by his 12 Years producer Brad Pitt.

"I love it. I'm really enjoying it," he says of the red-carpet-let's-take-a-meeting-flavor-of-the-moment whirl. He loves L.A.; he loves Pitt and his production company, Plan B; he loves New York and wants to work there one day; and he really loves London, especially his neighborhood near Hampstead Heath. "I go running and swimming there; it's fantastic," he says, those words still coming in a bubbling rush. "It's a beautiful, neighborly part of the world as well—families, it's quiet, especially during the night, it's gorgeous. It's a really nice place to go home to."

As for the foreseeable future, though, Cumberbatch is cheerfully resigned. "I don't know," he says with a barely fatigued sigh. "Have suitcase will travel." Bursting seams and all.

身着黑白色格伦花格呢夹克和格子衬衫，脚踩一双条纹帆布鞋，本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇昂首阔步地走进宾馆哐当当的舞厅，显得整洁时髦。他注意到某人脚边放着一只弄皱了的多伦多国际电影节手提袋，便用信任的口吻对那人说：“我看到你的电影节手提袋了。”那是用来替换在海关坏掉的那只袋子的，里面塞满了杂七杂八的旅行必需品，还有一台笔记本电脑。

“其实我也遇到过这种情况，”他热情主动地说，“因为我总在不停地打点行李。再好、再完美的行李箱都能被我撑破，里面总是塞得满满当当的，结果不是缝合线绷了，就是把手掉了，你懂的。”

大众情人人人爱

我们当然懂啦。但有一点要讲明，没人能真正知道作为康伯巴奇的真实感受。在过去的一年里，他的日程一直被排得，呃，像行李箱一样满满当当。在美国公共广播公司和英国广播公司最棒的文学改编圈里，这位37岁（编注：英文原文刊发于2013年10月）的英国人一直是人见人爱的大众情人，他在去年拍摄的《霍比特人：意外之旅》中扮演了死灵法师的角色。但在刚刚过去的这个夏天，他非常成功地扮演了《星际迷航：暗黑无界》中可汗的角色，真正闯入了大众的心中。今年10月18日，他将在《第五阶层》中饰演主角——维基解密的创始人朱利安·阿桑奇。此外，他还在两部备受瞩目、即将上映的影片中扮演了配角：由史蒂夫·麦克奎恩执导的《为奴十二年》以及改编自特雷西·莱茨荣获普利策奖的戏剧《八月：奥色治郡》。

“真是满满当当的一年啊！”康伯巴奇若有所思地叹了口气说，“不可思议，不可思议啊！不过其实应该是两年，因为《星际迷航》是我们在去年年初开拍的，而在那之前，天哪，这要倒回到很久以前了。我是说，毫不夸张地说，我所能够想象的自己作为一名演员能被要求达到的那种高度，迄今持续了差不多四五年的时间。”

康伯巴奇说起话来语速飞快，似乎都不用喘气，一串串单词欢快地喷涌而出，连绵不绝，这表明他此时此刻的确非常激动，虽然人们常忍不住将这种夸张的言辞解读为一个精明的初出茅庐者训练有素的行为。那些自封为“康伯碧池”的粉丝们把他定位为另类的海报偶像，对她们来说，他非常简单，就是那么棱角分明，那么潇洒迷人，那么文雅有礼，那么谦虚有度，足以让任何人放下戒心——一切都宛若她们那在寒冷冬日里随风飘摆的幻想。

天生我材会演戏

这一切都是他脚踏实地得来的。康伯巴奇的父母蒂莫西·卡尔顿和旺达·文森姆都是演员。从小在伦敦长大的他，既能自在地身处《伯克贵族名谱》中记录的上流贵族圈（他的一位祖先是维多利亚女王治下的领事），又能习惯演艺圈那强弧光灯下的世界。（那么“康伯巴奇”这个姓是怎么来的呢？这是他父亲的姓氏，“卡尔顿”是中间名，后来成了艺名。所以本尼迪克特只是重新加上了家族姓氏。）但他在事业上却一直按自己的路线发展，这甚至是他父母也无法为他准备的。在一些广受赞誉的影片里，他都有着引人注目的表现，如《赎罪》《锅匠，裁缝，士兵，间谍》和《战马》等；还有电视剧，如《霍金的故事》《神探夏洛克》和《队列之末》等。在伦敦的戏剧舞台上，他是一位颇有名望的人物：2010年，特伦斯·拉提根的《舞会之后》重新搬上舞台，康伯巴奇凭其在剧中的出色表演赢得赞誉；之后一年，在由丹尼·波义耳改编的实验版的《弗兰肯斯坦的灵与肉》中，他又凭其表演荣获了劳伦斯·奥利弗奖。他说，《舞会之后》是他的转折点，自那之后，电话铃就一直响个不停，再也没停下过。

“从一开始我就知道，我想要一些和我父母所有的完全不一样的东西，但我并不知道那究竟是什么，我不知道那会如何体现，但他们看了以后甚至都会说‘哇！’”康伯巴奇说，“这有点出乎所有人的意料。不过压力什么的也蛮大的，和他们那会儿的情况不同。”

这足以冲昏一个年轻人的头脑。但康伯巴奇，还有像迈克尔·法斯宾德那样的同辈演员，正在演艺生涯上大放异彩，在诸如《星际迷航》和《霍比特人》等鸿篇巨制的系列电影中扮演了一个又一个角色，令许多演员垂涎不已。据康伯巴奇说，他的榜样是詹姆斯·麦卡沃伊（曾与其联袂主演《恋爱学分》）。麦卡沃伊还同法斯宾德一起出演了《X战警》系列影片。

百变星君显神通

用“很有意思”来形容康伯巴奇的演技实在是轻描淡写，他更像是一位经过千锤百炼的百变星君，轻轻松松就能变换成各种性格、各种体型的人物。他的演技在《第五阶层》中达到了炉火纯青、无可超越的地步。影片中他对阿桑奇的模仿简直天衣无缝，包括后者那招牌式的澳大利亚口音，含混不清又十分古怪，还有那让人捉摸不定、无所适从的举止（当然也是多亏了那个淡金色的假发套）。在《第五阶层》筹备初期，康伯巴奇曾给阿桑奇发过一封邮件，希望两人能见上一面，结果却石沉大海。直到拍摄前一天，阿桑奇才给他回了一封信，请求他不要演这部电影。

“当时我正在进行最后的试镜，试假发、化妆什么的，然后[就收到了]这封知识与魅力并存、言辞清晰而又十分睿智的邮件。他恳请我良心发现，不要再掺和这部电影的拍摄，因为他认为这部电影对他的事业而言是极为不利、极具破坏性的，”康伯巴奇回忆道，“这邮件就像一枚重磅炸弹，突然落入你的邮箱里。”

康伯巴奇给阿桑奇回了信。“我的回复同样是经过深思熟虑的，我希望我的回信也能具有同样的魅力。我完全尊重他的意见，但我尝试着向他说明以下两点：其一，这部电影不是纪录片，不是法庭上可以接受的呈堂证供，不是能改变人们对真理的认知或看法的真实存在，而是真相本身。

“其二，呃，实际上应该是三点。其二，它只是一部电影，无法改变人们的认知。它是一部具有自己独特风格的电影，不是《霍比特人》或《星际迷航》那样的。它不会引起大规模、大众化的浪潮效应。我确实很想让人们看到这部电影，但他却担心影片会被用作某种大众宣传工具，并对他造成伤害，这种担心真是反应过度了。其三，也是最重要的一点，这部影片永远不会跟他的观点对着干，也不会诋毁他。没有人热衷于刻画一些东西，以告诉观众该怎样思考。”

这场交流的结果是康伯巴奇在某种意义上成了阿桑奇在片场的支持者。他要求公开阿桑奇的观点，因为其他人都能表达自己的意见。（《第五阶层》改编自阿桑奇以前的两位同事——丹尼尔·多姆沙伊特-伯格和《卫报》调查记者戴维·利的叙述，他们对阿桑奇心怀不满。）“这样做很棒，因为这就相当于我们把阿桑奇请到了这里，”《第五阶层》的导演比尔·康顿说，“这部片子关于场景背景的对话比我拍过的任何一部片子都要多，这样做的确很刺激。因为这会逼着你10次、11次、12次地去寻找你所拍摄内容的真实性。”

康伯巴奇现在坦言，阿桑奇最后时刻的请求让他“真的有点喘不过气来”。据康顿回忆，两人的通信明显给他的男主角带来了烦恼，他也因为无法阻止两人的通信而感到沮丧。“我意识到，此事已将康伯巴奇置于一个多么不公平的境地，甚至他自己都弄不明白是怎么回事。你能想象吗？几乎就像是患了精神分裂症。因为你不管走到哪儿都在想着自己是另外一个人，而那人却说：‘不要成为我！’我和他谈过这个问题，他说：‘我想带着这种矛盾演，因为这样能更好地理解他的困境。’我想他说得对，但我仍然觉得我好像看到了他所经受的折磨。”

现在，仅在《第五阶层》作为多伦多电影节开幕之夜影片进行全球首映的几天后，康伯巴奇身上就再也没有那种饱受折磨的痕迹了。丝毫没有了。他一会儿深情地回忆起前一天晚上，在《为奴十二年》晚会上和法斯宾德（也叫“法西”）一起跳舞的情形；一会儿分享自己居住在洛杉矶时的温馨记忆。那时他正在拍摄《星际迷航》，整天和好友厮混在一起，有他最好的朋友亚当·阿克兰（演员乔斯的孙子），终生的伙伴特尔蒂乌斯·比纳，以及和他联袂主演《恋爱学分》和《星际迷航》的爱丽丝·伊芙。很快他就要飞回伦敦，开始和凯拉·奈特利一起排演《模仿游戏》——一部关于密码专家阿兰·图灵的影片。他还答应出演由《为奴十二年》制作人布拉德·皮特制作的动作历险片《迷失Z城》。

红地毯，老友会——在谈到当下这种令人眩晕的生活时，康伯巴奇说：“我喜欢这一切。我真的乐在其中。”他喜欢洛杉矶；喜欢皮特及其制作公司B计划；喜欢纽约，并希望有朝一日能在那里工作；也非常喜欢伦敦，尤其是他所居住的位于汉普斯特希斯附近的社区。“我常在那儿跑步、游泳，那真是个好地方，”他说，仍然是一串串单词噼里啪啦地喷薄而出，“那也是世界上非常美丽、和睦的地方——居家的地方，特别安静，尤其是在夜晚，感觉棒极了。那的确是个回家的好地方。

不过，谈到可以预见的未来，康伯巴奇既兴奋又有点无奈。“我不知道，”他叹了口气说，话语中几乎没有疲倦，“带上行李，踏上旅途。”或许还有绷断的边缝线之类的吧。 aVJKcKkLKESCOHkGtQQN0giKhvxrkFz8vPZFFTWTWIHIw0RmRKdhFjavYSyaR3bA