Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch CBE, born 19 July 1976, is an English actor. Known for his work on screen and stage, he has received various accolades, including a British Academy Television Award, a Primetime Emmy Award and a Laurence Olivier Award. He has also been nominated for two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards and four Golden Globe Awards. In 2014, Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and in 2015, he was appointed a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to the performing arts and to charity. Cumberbatch studied drama at the Victoria University of Manchester and obtained a Master of Arts in classical acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. He began acting in Shakespearean theatre productions before making his West End debut in Richard Eyre's revival of Hedda Gabler in 2005. Since then, he has starred in Royal National Theatre productions of After the Dance (2010) and Frankenstein (2011), winning the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor for the latter. In 2015, he played the title role in Hamlet at the Barbican Theatre. Cumberbatch's television work includes his performance as Stephen Hawking in the television film Hawking (2004). He gained greater recognition for playing Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series Sherlock from 2010 to 2017, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie. For playing the title role in the miniseries Patrick Melrose (2018), he won the British Academy Television Award for Best Actor. In films, Cumberbatch has played Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), and has appeared in the historical dramas Amazing Grace (2006), 12 Years a Slave (2013), 1917 (2019) and The Courier (2020). He received critical acclaim and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performances as Alan Turing in The Imitation Game (2014) and as a volatile rancher in The Power of the Dog (2021). From 2012 to 2014, through voice and motion capture, Cumberbatch played Smaug and Sauron in The Hobbit film series. Since 2016, he has played Dr. Stephen Strange in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including the films Doctor Strange (2016) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022). In 1728, Benedict Cumberbatch's 7th-great-grandfather, Abraham Cumberbatch of Saint Andrew, Barbados (died 1753), acquired properties on the island of Barbados in the West Indies, which used enslaved people for labour. These properties were passed down through the generations to Benedict's great-great-great-grandfather, Abraham Parry Cumberbatch (died 1840 in Hellingly, Sussex). He was an absentee landlord of two estates, Cleland and Lammings, for which he received £5388 as slave compensation (via the Slave Compensation Act 1837, four years after the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 had abolished slavery). The Cleland plantation enslaved 250 people, and was the main source of the Cumberbatch family's considerable wealth at the time; they were one of the richest families in Britain. There has been media speculation that the Barbados National Task Force on Reparations, which, as part of the wider Caribbean's CARICOM Reparations Commission, is as of January 2023 seeking reparations from wealthy British MP Richard Drax for his ancestors' involvement in slavery, might also consider seeking reparations from families such as the Cumberbatches. Benedict Cumberbatch has said that by the time of his birth, most of the money had run out, and he grew up "definitely middle class", or upper middle class. The Drax family still owns a large estate in Barbados, and Richard Drax is said to be worth "at least £150m". Abraham Parry Cumberbatch's son (Benedict's great-great-grandfather) Robert William Cumberbatch, was a British consul in Turkey and the Russian Empire.His great-grandfather, Henry Alfred Cumberbatch, was also a diplomat who served as consul in Turkey and Lebanon, and his grandfather, Henry Carlton Cumberbatch, was a submarine officer of both World Wars, and a prominent figure of London high society. Cumberbatch is third cousin 16 times removed of King Richard III, whom he portrayed in The Hollow Crown. He attended Richard III's 2015 reburial and read a poem.