hello darling. can i ask you - as you are an actor - in what ways benedict impresses and/or inspires you? i think we all get his cheekbones, his voice, his ability to make us feel and to tell a story. but i'd love to know why, from a technical p.o.v. from

Can I ever! Or at least attempt to. Let it be known that I’m still an actor-in-training so I’m still learning (but aren’t we all). Talking about acting can be surprisingly New Agey and then five seconds later brutally technical. I will endeavour to give you a good mix of both. 

Benedict Cumberbatch is a formidable actor as we all know and we all have written tags arias in varying degrees of frenzy when it comes to his ability of showing emotion or his cheekbones and arms. But his technique is what makes him formidable. 
“Good Acting”, as we think of it, is being true to the feeling you’re trying to portray. In the actor it comes from a connection with the body and the material. Acting is all about making the other actors look good on stage. It’s about being open to impulses from my own body and other’s bodies. I can’t deliver a line with the text pre-set in my head, so “oh I’ll put emphasis on this word and this and make it sound like I’m angry” wouldn’t work. It will always come out fake and rehearsed. In a good actor, every line of a play or movie or episode sounds like they’re saying it for the very first time, even though we know it can’t be.

Benedict is a fantastic actor because he keeps himself open to his fellow scene partners.He lets himself be influenced by what is happening in the scene and rather than “playing a feeling”, which would be a weak acting choice because it is passive, he plays tactics or, oh the very over-used word, intentions: the scene in Hamlet where he ridicules Polonius by playing mad is such a great scene because rather than just “playing crazy” he plays strong actions. He may want to befuddle Polonius, confuse, embarrass, poke, prod, infuriate, etc. A whole slew of verbs applies. It gives Benedict (or the actor in general) a tool to use rather than just an emotion to play. If embarrass doesn’t work, he can try infuriate. If that fails, confuse him. It gives him endless possibilities to play with and in turn gives his scene partners something to play off of. I am convinced that Benedict has a knack for this as it is hard finding the right tools for each moment intuitively and I can only guess at how often his Sherlock changes tactics in order to make John move in for instance. That’s the new agey side. Listen to your inner self and find the character within yourself and just play play play. I kinda wanna see his Clown (a topic for another night, that).

When it comes to pure technique, he is extremely grounded. He drops his breath, which means he breathes deep into his belly and makes his diaphragm work, which in turn allows him to use the whole range of his extraordinary voice without fail. It means there is no excessive movement, only coordinated movement that originates from an impulse, not a thought. It means he is aligned in his body (upright and forward - open). His whole body is alive, he’s really well connected to his core (otherwise known as pelvic chakra).
My voice teacher keeps mentioning him as an example whenever he wants us to think big in terms of voice. Benedict’s voice is his secret weapon and Nr.1 tool. He has a very big sound box, not meaning the larynx but the resonance in his body, especially in the chest, as we all could witness with Smaug. He vibrates and GOD what wouldn’t I give to see him live. If an actor uses all his resonators, meaning places in his body where sound pings off of (bones, sinuses, soft palate, ribs, pelvis, skull), he/she vibrates with sound. Those vibrations can be felt in an audience. I saw it happen last year when I saw Colm Feore as King Lear. I was pretty far back in the audience, and the force of his voice took my breath away. I would love if someone who saw Ben’s Hamlet could tell me what it felt like from the audience. He uses every fibre of his body for his voice and it makes him ring. Literally ring, his body echoes with his voice. His Creature in Frankenstein is an excellent example for that. 

And lastly, he’s just fucking genius with text. He knows his rhetoric, he knows when to cadence or arc or climax, pathos, logos, ethos, all of it. He makes his words fly and it’s a thing of beauty. 

I will stop now. Thank you, dusky, for this ask, it made me think hard about what I take away from my training on a daily level and reminded me where I want to be. He is my role model and my idol. I look up to him as an actor and his human and kind self. I aspire to be as good an actor as him (regardless of my abilities). 
To all my followers: send me more asks if you’re curious and I’ll answer to the best of my abilities (and extremely subjectively and barely educatedly…. that’s a word now. I’ve decided.)