THE INTERNET is still a wild and woolly place with all sorts of dark corners for folks with strange enthusiasms and fetishes.
One such corner – which seems to be growing ever larger each day, is one devoted to the British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, he of the ludicrously high cheekbones and perpetually shocked expression, best known on these shores as the star of the popular BBC America Sherlock Holmes reboot.
Cumberbatch’s fans even a have a name for themselves – Cumberbitches – and can be found gushing over the British thesp on sites including Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.? The Cumberbitches even claim 37,000 members, suggesting our Ben would not be hard up for a date if he decided to move to these shores.
He’s “the biggest thing since Jesus. I mean, you know, since the Beatles,” writes Alexandra Sokoloff, author of the bestselling crime thriller Huntress Moon. Another online fan, who calls herself “Cumberqueen,” calls him “a chunk of raw ginger.”
Which leaves a lingering question for the rest of us. Just who is this guy?
In case you don’t know, Cumberbatch is a 36-year-old stage and screen actor who made his name on the small screen in the hit miniseries To the Ends of the Earth and The Last Enemy, while also appearing in film with supporting roles in Atonement, The Other Boleyn Girl and War Horse. But his breakout role is as TV’s modern day Sherlock Holmes, in which he stars alongside Martin Freeman as Watson, reimagined as a battle-scarred Iraq vet.
Cumberbatch fits this role like a hand in a glove – he is tall, otherworldly, with piercing eyes and an unruly mop of curls. He looks like a posh misfit – which is exactly how Sherlock’s creator, Arthur Conan-Doyle, conceived him.
Fans of Cumberbatch all have their own opinions on what it is about him that sparks such intense obsession “He very much comes across as a quintessential gentleman in the way that other actors don’t exactly,” Naomi Roper, owner and creator of the benedictcumberbatch.co.uk fan site, told The Daily Beast website this week. “His innate Britishness appeals to people.”
Sokoloff is more blunt about Big Ben’s appeal. “It’s a true physiological reaction,” she said this week. “It’s very sexual. College kids are as loopy about him as women in their 60s. There’s a cachet to being a nerd these days….We know what he must’ve gone through with that nerdy name, and now that he’s come out of it, it’s Revenge of the Nerds and Revenge of the Geeks.”
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