Benedict Cumberbatch's Best TV And Movie Roles Ranked

In his first lead role, Benedict Cumberbatch took on the part of renowned physicist Stephen Hawking in the 2004 TV biopic "Hawking." The film chronicled the early years of the young scientist as he dealt with breakthroughs in his scientific research while combating a mysterious illness that would eventually cripple him. From his courtship of Jane Wilde to his mission to prove the theory of the Big Bang, the film delves into how a diagnosis of motor neuron disease affected his life and work in the 1960s. As much as "Hawking" is a touching and powerful story of the real-life physicist, it's also a showcase of Cumberbatch's superb acting talent that would garner him much acclaim.

In an interview with the BBC, the actor spoke about why the role appealed to him, saying it wasn't just Hawking's great renown, but also the lesser-documented period in his life that the film would portray. "This was a very rich and fascinating period because of the three strands of his life which are coming together," he explained. "This incredible brain finding a subject and having a moment of great realization and inspiration; finding love and the most extraordinary relationship ... and coming to terms with an illness."

In the first of four movies for Cumberbatch in 2021, "The Courier" was, like "Hawking," based on real life events. Here the actor stars as Greville Wynne, an electronics trader whose business took him all over the world, and who was recruited by British spy agency MI6 to help ferry information to their deep cover agent in Soviet-era Russia in the early 1960s. After years working with the intelligence group both he and his Russian contact Oleg Penkovsky were found out by their counterparts in the KGB. While Penkovsky would be executed for betraying his homeland, Wynne was kept alive and used as political leverage while serving several years in a Russian prison. In 1968, in a deal with the Soviet government, a prisoner exchange was arranged and Wynne was finally released from captivity. 

"The Courier" tells Wynne's entire remarkable story, from his recruitment and missions with MI6 all the way through his arrest, imprisonment, and release. Not Cumberbatch's first British political thriller (or even his second), the film was yet another fine entry in the genre, with our own review here at Looper saying his performance as the British businessman-turned-spy "ranks among the actor's best work."

We'd normally not include a supporting voice-over role on a list of best performances, but Benedict Cumberbatch did more than just provide the dialogue for the dragon Smaug in "The Hobbit" trilogy. As behind-the-scenes featurettes would show, Cumberbatch performed the entire role of the gold-hoarding dragon Smaug, including the physical motion capture and the facial and mouth movements, in addition to his incredible vocal performance. In his motion capture work the actor dedicated himself fully to the role, inhabiting the part of the creeping, crawling, monstrous behemoth with as much intensity and physicality as any human character. Footage of Cumberbatch on the virtual set, decorated in white dots, reveals an actor totally committed to the creation of the CGI character — a one-man pantomime that would impress even Andy Serkis.

Smaug would appear briefly in the closing moments of "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" before Cumberbatch took on the role, but his performance on set in motion capture was so impressive that it forced the producers to rethink their design of the character before his full appearance in the sequels. His efforts to bring Smaug to life were worth it though, as he proved to be an important piece of the film.

In possibly the best-reviewed film of his impressive career, Benedict Cumberbatch played William Ford, a Georgia plantation owner in the historical drama "12 Years a Slave," based on the real memoir of a former slave that were published in 1853. Alongside Cumberbatch the film starred Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong'o, and Paul Dano, in an uncompromising look at the history of the slave trade through the eyes of one of its victims. Ejiofor played the memoir's author, Solomon Northup, a respected and educated man living in upstate New York who is kidnapped and forced into slavery, an all-too-common practice in those days. Cumberbatch plays Ford as a supposedly enlightened slave owner with a heart, who helps protects Northup from the violent tendencies of the plantation's carpenter, John Tibeats (Paul Dano).

The film would be lauded not just for its powerful story, but its fine performances as well. It would take home multiple Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Actor for Ejiofor, with Cumberbatch too earning praise for his role as the complicated Ford, who — while a kinder and gentler oppressor — still supports the slave trade by selling Northup off to a sadistic new owner.

Even after Benedict Cumberbatch became a successful leading man, he was never afraid to cede the spotlight if it meant taking part in a great movie. In 2015 he'd do just that, playing a key supporting role to Johnny Depp in Scott Cooper's "Black Mass," based on the non-fiction book, "Black Mass: The True Story of an Unholy Alliance Between the FBI and the Irish Mob." Also starring Joel Edgerton, Jesse Plemons, and Kevin Bacon, "Black Mass" was yet another dramatization of true events, this time a crime drama. Cumberbatch played politician William Bulger, brother to mob mastermind Whitey Bulger (Depp), who became a reluctant informant for the FBI to help the agency take down a rival Mafia family. 

While in real life it has never been proven that Billy aided or colluded with his brother in his criminal enterprise, Cumberbatch portrays him in the film as a sly politician happy to use his influence to help his sibling. Cumberbatch once again got rave reviews, with The New York Times praising the actor in its appraisal of the film, saying, "Benedict Cumberbatch plays William Bulger with a slyness that makes you wish 'Black Mass' had delved deeper into the mysteries of blood and power."

In 2014's "The Imitation Game," Benedict Cumberbatch once again stepped into the role of an influential historical figure. This time he played British mathematician Alan Turing, the man behind the so-called "Turing Test" developed to determine whether a computer could think like a human. The movie chronicles a more dramatic part of his life, when he worked alongside British government scientists to help decode German communications during World War II. It's Turing that solves the perplexing problem, while facing discrimination and persecution for both his eccentric and arrogant personality and for being a closeted gay man in puritanical 1940s England. But in devising his solution to the Enigma code, Turing would also create the machine that would lead to the invention of the modern computer.

Reviews for the film were stellar, calling out Cumberbatch for his pitch-perfect, Oscar-nominated performance as Turing, the troubled, pioneering scientist who changed the face of engineering and helped win a war. In her review at RogerEbert.com, critic Susan Wloszczyna called Cumberbatch's work "impeccably perfect in every way."

There should have been no doubt when you began reading this list which role would land in the top spot. The 2010 reinvention of Sherlock Holmes may have ruffled the feathers of some literary purists when it was first announced, as it was a radical departure from the turn-of-the-century Arthur Conan Doyle stories, but Cumberbatch quickly proved the skeptics wrong. Encompassing four three-part series and a holiday special across seven years, "Sherlock" turned Benedict Cumberbatch from a little-known English actor to a bona fide superstar and sex symbol. 

Cumberbatch played the character as few others could, with an aloof swagger, towering gravitas, and painful social awkwardness. His portrayal of the troubled detective became an instant classic, a perfect mix of intellect, arrogance, and detached coolness that made him a TV icon. Cumberbatch played the modern-day Holmes not as a confident, bold man of action, but as a genius on the spectrum, whose intellect bordered on superhuman. Beyond his stoic charm however, it was his bro-mantic chemistry with co-star Martin Freeman as this version's Watson that made the show so electric, with the two disparate personalities playing off each other perfectly. For his work as the new Holmes, Cumberbatch would be heaped with praise, and even mooted as the best actor to inhabit the role.