However, one particular actor, who I feel has influenced me greatest is Benedict Cumberbatch. I feel his quirky twist on BBC’s Sherlock is utterly fantastic. He has an incredible ability to play such an intelligent, stubborn and comical character and to recall information like we all expect Sherlock to be able to do, but convince us that he is Sherlock Holmes and a legendary detective. The way he struts around, oozing confidence and charisma with every gesture, witty comments and sarcastic poses make him look completely at home in his role, which I admire. Not to mention the fact that he shoots a scene naked, this indicates to me that he has no fear and is prepared to do anything for the love of acting. This forced me to respect him as I could never picture myself doing such a thing in front of a whole crew.
My admiration of Benedict Cumberbatch further increased when I saw him play roles in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and War Horse, where he drops his quirky, charismatic Sherlock act and evolves into two far more mature and serious characters with much more grief stricken looks, where emotion seeps out of every line in his face. Incredibly, he also managed to provide the motion capture for Necromancer, a goblin, in The Hobbit plus the movement of Smaug the Dragon. This, I felt gave him an edge of quirkiness, by playing the role of an animal and not a human. In Star Trek Into Darkness he drops his charming and endearing characters for a far more nasty, sophisticated villain. Cumberbatch also holds a rich theatre career, most notably starring in Danny Boyles Frankenstein at the Royal National Theatre. Overall he is a very versatile and incredible actor, able to play many characters with what seems like ease.
I believe I can use these skills Cumberbatch has shown for my performance of Lord of the Flies. By watching his every single gesture and action he has more than certainly helped me understand that by being so confident and by having absolute faith in your abilities and character portrayal, that you can completely lose yourself and act without any pressure as you are no longer yourself, merely portraying a character. I want to be able to portray a variety of characters with ease, but realise an incredible amount of practice, studying and ability is required.
The raw emotion and seriousness he can show through his eyes has definitely got me practicing in front of the mirror every day so I can grasp how I react to certain places in the play, but more importantly how I should look at certain points and lines in the play, to feel the emotion my character is feeling in the real world, actually making myself feel what my character feels. I am able to use what I have learnt from Cumberbatch’s expressions in Lord of The Flies. For example, making sure I look furious every time Jack Merridew sniggers or snaps at my character.
His posh, well spoken accent is a great example of the accent I wanted to try and use in Lord of The Flies for my private school boy character of “Simon.” I feel that by watching Cumberbatch closely, I can improve the use of my facial expressions and physical actions, like posture (is my character confident or shy) or arm action when I am speaking as my character, but more importantly my facial expressions and posture when I am not speaking, what I do when not speaking is just important as speaking. He has more than certainly inspired me to carry on acting and pursue it as a potential career, and hopefully now to have a real good go at playing a confident or darker, evil character. But my main priority is that I can play the character assigned to me to the best of my ability and make the audience come out thinking, "Wow, that Kyle was good." Comments like that would definitely make all the work worth it, and give me courage to continue on.
