Benedict Cumberbatch is the latest star to be in Vogue.
Cumberbatch heading to Boston. Photographed by Mario Testino, Vogue, December 2014
The actor talks about EVERYTHING going on in his meteoric rise in the acting world, and the newly engaged star also talks about the coming film “Black Mass” where Johnny Depp will roll out his “Blow” Boston accent again for his character, Beantown’s most wanted felon, Whitey Bulger, filmed in a part of Boston that quite frankly is getting a little tired of being typecast by Hollywood outsiders.
“Black Mass” is based on a non-fiction book by two former Boston Globe reporters, Dick Lehr and Gerard O’Neill, about th ecomplex relationship between Bulger and FBI agent John Connolly.
Jack Nicholson used tales of Bulger to colorize his version of the mob boss in “The Departed,” even though he was playing a fictionalized character. Unlike regionally shot films such as “Good Will Hunting” and “The Departed,” the new film “Black Mass” will be the first true story writ large on the screen. Bulger is less a local hero and more a scourge that many Southie families know all too well, from murders and maimings that Bulger and his crew were directly responsible for.
Now Vogue has Cumberbatch sitting down, and the “Sherlock” star discusses his Oscar-tipped performance in “The Imitation Game” along with other projects.
Cumberbatch’s fierce intelligence and odd-ball good looks have won him versatile roles and created an ecstatic, borderline rabid female following. Women just love a loquacious smarty pants.
“I really, really love my job,” says Benedict Cumberbatch to Vogue in his unctuous baritone voice that mesmerizes. “I love sets. I love crews. I love theaters. I love audiences.”
Excerpt from Vogue:
Meanwhile he takes enormous pride in tackling every kind of role. That’s one reason he signed on to Black Mass, a real-life crime saga in which he plays Billy Bulger, a Machiavellian Massachusetts political boss who, in a touch worthy of a 1930s movie, just happens to be the brother of Boston’s most notorious gangster, Whitey Bulger, played by Depp.
“Billy’s a Bostonian,” Cumberbatch explains, “and that’s a really tricky accent to do. The whole milieu of that film was alien to me, which is what was attractive about it. It was a big challenge.”