The Familiar Faces of Benedict Cumberbatch

The Chameleon

Brit actor Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays Sherlock Holmes on TV, stars in this year's critically acclaimed thriller, The Imitation Game. Throughout his career, he melts into his many characters. Here, a look at his career so far.

The Breakthrough

The drama grad gets his first notable role in his home country as the star of 2004’s Hawking, a BBC TV movie about the early life of English physicist/cosmologist Stephen Hawking and his struggles with motor neuron disease.

A Move to Movies

Cumberbatch (pictured with actress Juno Temple) makes the transition to feature films in the World War II-era period piece Atonement (2007), in which he appeared as an upper-class rapist.

The Other Man

In 2008, he is in another period piece as the husband of Henry VIII’s mistress (played by Scarlett Johansson) in the 16th-century romance The Other Boleyn Girl.

Interesting Icons

In 2010’s Van Gogh: Painted With Words, Cumberbatch earned high praise. But it was his smarter-than-thou hauteur as a Sherlock Holmes who relies on 21st-century tech to solve mysteries in the PBS series Sherlock that earned him legions of new fans on this side of the Atlantic.

The Major League

In 2011 Cumberbatch is in two Oscar-nominated films. He was Major Stewart (far left) in the military saga War Horse. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Cumberbatch was Peter Guillam, right-hand man to Gary Oldman’s British superspy George Smiley.

A Blockbuster Role

Cumberbatch took a giant step into popular fare as villainous Khan, a genetically engineered superhuman, in 2013's Star Trek Into Darkness. The New York Times raved that the actor “fuses Byronic charisma with an impatient, imperious intelligence.”

Award Bait

The actor was Emmy-nominated in 2013 as a British aristocrat torn between his manipulative wife (Rebecca Hall, pictured) and his suffragette mistress (Adelaide Clemens) in the well-received HBO miniseries Parade’s End.

Compelling Character

A bleached-blond Cumberbatch, now 37, plays a rare contemporary, real-life figure as Julian Assange, founder of the controversial whistleblower website Wikileaks, in 2013's The Fifth Estate.

American History

In Steve McQueen's 2013 "Best Picture" Oscar-winning film, 12 Years a Slave, Cumberbatch attempts a Southern accent as a cotton planter and benevolent first owner of Solomon Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a true-life black freeman, kidnapped and held in bondage before the Civil War.  

Life of a Dragon

That silky, resonant voice is used to full effect as Cumberbatch breathes fiery life into Smaug, the gold-plundering dragon — described by the actor as an “incredibly vainglorious, beautiful, fantastical creature”” — the antagonist in the second of three Hobbit films.

Unlikely Loser

The actor switches venues to current-day Oklahoma to attend a family funeral in the dark comedy August: Osage County alongside Meryl Streep’s drug-addicted matriarch as his aunt and Julia Roberts as his strong-willed cousin.

The Math Genius

In the 2014 thriller The Imitation Game, he portrays Alan Turing, the computing pioneer who was key to cracking the Germans' Enigma code in World War II. Though Turing’s breakthrough likely turned the war in the Allies' favor, his own government prosecuted him for his sexual orientation in 1952.

More Entertainment Slideshows

• The 10 best Movies for Grownups in 2012
• 16 songs everyone over 50 should own
• The Rolling Stones: 50 years and counting
• All-time favorite rock ’n’ roll stars