Benedict Cumberbatch opened up a about a terrifying ordeal that happened 21 years ago: he was briefly abducted.
In an interview with Variety, Cumberbatch recalled that in 2004, while shooting BBC miniseries To The Ends Of The Earth in South Africa, he was robbed and abducted for hours by six men after going on a driving excursion with friends. The publication reports that Benedict and friends were pulled over while on the excursion by the thieves, and "forced into the car and driven around for hours." They were eventually let out, but the robbers tied them up and ordered them to sit execution-style before fleeing the scene.
Benedict recalled, "It gave me a sense of time, but not necessarily a good one," adding, "It made me impatient to live a life less ordinary, and I’m still dealing with that impatience."
The scary experience also turned the actor into an adrenaline junkie, as he explained, "The near-death stuff turbo-fueled all that. It made me go, ‘Oh, right, yeah, I could die at any moment.’ I was throwing myself out of planes, taking all sorts of risks. But apart from my parents, I didn’t have any real dependents at that point. Now that’s changed, and that sobers you. I’ve looked over the edge; it’s made me comfortable with what lies beneath it. And I’ve accepted that that’s the end of all our stories."
The "dependents" he is referring to are his wife and children. Cumberbatch married Sophie Hunter in 2015, and the couple has three children together; Christopher (9), Hal (7) and Finn (6).
