Benedict Cumberbatch Recalls Being Kidnapped & Held Captive for Hours

Benedict Cumberbatch is opening up to Variety about a past “near-death” experience, when he was abducted in South Africa.

The actor, who stars in “The Thing with Feathers,” was in the country in 2004 to film the BBC miniseries “To the Ends of the Earth” and went on a diving excursion with friends.

Cumberbatch revealed they had a tire blow out afterward and got stranded. That’s when six men kidnapped him and his friends. They were forced to drive around with the men for hours. The ordeal ended when the men tied them up and then fled.

Reflecting on the experience, he said, “It gave me a sense of time, but not necessarily a good one. It made me impatient to live a life less ordinary, and I’m still dealing with that impatience.”  

He explained nearly dying “turbo-fueled” his pursuit of extreme sports like skydiving.

“It made me go, ‘Oh, right, yeah, I could die at any moment.’ I was throwing myself out of planes, taking all sorts of risks,” he said.

“I’ve looked over the edge; it’s made me comfortable with what lies beneath it,” he said. “And I’ve accepted that that’s the end of all our stories.” 

Cumberbatch — now the dad of sons Kit, 9, Hal, 7, and Finn, 6 — said having kids “sobers you.”

“The minute you have kids, this sense of time sinks in far more profoundly."

He went on, “My youngest is turning 6 tomorrow, and I’m like, ‘I will be in my 60s when he’s 21,’ you know? It’s crazy. It’s gone so fast. So, there’s a huge shift in priorities, and it makes you value what you do with your life in a very different way.”