"卷福"本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇的意外星途

In the peculiar-looking, former cross-dressing Shakespearean actor Benedict Cumberbatch, Hollywood has found an unlikely leading man.

本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇(Benedict Cumberbatch)，這個長相奇特，年少時男扮女裝出演莎劇的演員，出人意料地成了好萊塢的一線男星。

Benedict Cumberbatch was in mid-monologue, holding forth on the dangers of the surveillance society, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was meant to be promoting his latest movie, whatever that was (he has been in a lot of them lately). He talks superfast, so that when he paused, the effect was of a train driver slamming on the emergency brakes. "Why does anyone want to know my opinions?" he asked. "I'm not interested in reading my opinions."

本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇正談論着政府監控的危害。慷慨激昂之間，他突然意識到自己接受採訪的目的是推薦他最近出演的電影——我們且不管那是什麼，因爲這段時間來他出現在不少電影中。他說話語速極快，所以當他停頓時，那效果就好像一位火車司機猛踩緊急煞車。“爲什麼會有人想要知道我的想法？”他問道：“我可不想在報紙上讀到自己的觀點。”

He has no idea. There are people out there these days who so love to hear Cumberbatch talk — who so love to watch Cumberbatch exist — that they do not care what he does, as long as they get to observe him doing it. Somehow, along a career consisting of highly interest-ing but generally non-megastar-making roles (most recently, the lead in the BBC series "Sherlock"; Khan, the wrathful villain in the movie "Star Trek Into Darkness"; the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, in "The Fifth Estate" and the voice of Smaug, the very bad-tempered dragon in the latest "Hobbit" movie), Cumberbatch has progressed from being everyone's favorite secret crush to one of the most talked-about actors in Hollywood.

他可是有所不知。近來這段時間，康伯巴奇的一言一行讓一些粉絲如此癡狂——他們不管他到底說了做了什麼，只要能有機會聽到看到他就好。在康伯巴奇的職業生涯中，他出演了一些非常有趣，但一般而言卻很難讓演員本人成爲巨星的角色（最近幾年來他出演了BBC電視劇《神探夏洛克》[Sherlock]中的主角；《星際迷航：黑暗無邊》[Star Trek Into Darkness]中的狂暴反派可汗[Khan]；《危機解密》[Fifth Estate]中“維基解密[Wikileaks]的創始人朱利安·阿桑奇[Julian Assange]；在最新一部《霍比特人》[The Hobbit]中，他給史矛革[Smaug]這條壞脾氣的惡龍配了音。），但不知怎麼的，康伯巴奇從所有人最喜歡的祕密暗戀對象變成了好萊塢被談論最多的演員之一。

His celebrity manifests itself in unexpected ways. When Cumberbatch, who is 37, appeared on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon," Fallon noted that more people were waiting in the standby line than for any other guest that year. He was reportedly tweeted about 700,000 times in 2013.

他的知名度帶來了讓人意想不到的效應。當這位37歲的演員出現在《吉米·法倫晚間秀》(Late Night With Jimmy Fallon)的現場時，法倫透露說康伯巴奇是本年度吸引到最多等候排位觀衆的嘉賓。據報道，在2013年，康伯巴奇在推特上被提到70萬次。

Last fall, he appeared on the cover of Time's international edition. Although he has not been a romantic lead in any big films, and although he says he looks like "Sid from ‘Ice Age' " and although he once declared that "I always seem to be cast as slightly wan, ethereal, troubled intellectuals or physically ambivalent bad lovers," there are numerous websites devoted to the subject of his romantic prowess, e.g., "Benedict Cumberbatch — Fantastic Lover," a compendium of clips set to Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On," that has been viewed more than 490,000 times on YouTube. (These are mostly posted by his army of female fans, who call themselves "Cumberbitches" and who use the hashtag "Cumberwatch" when they tweet about his activities.)

去年秋天，他上了《時代》雜誌國際版的封面。雖然他並沒有主演過任何愛情大片，雖然他說自己長得像《冰河世紀》(Ice Age)裏的樹懶希德，雖然他說過“我好像總是被挑中演一些蒼白病態，不食人間煙火，麻煩纏身的知識分子，或是身體機能有問題，讓人失望的愛人，”但是還是有人在無數的網站上專門意淫他的情愛技能。比如《本尼迪克特·康伯巴奇——完美情人》(Benedict Cumberbatch — Fantastic Lover)。這是一個視頻輯成，配的背景音樂是馬文·蓋伊(Marvin Gaye)的《開始吧》(Let's Get It On)。這個視頻在YouTube上被點擊了49萬次。這些帖子很多都是他爲數衆多的女粉絲上傳的。她們自稱“康巴婊”(Cumberbitches)。在社交媒體上報道他的動向時，她們用的主題標籤是“康伯巴奇觀察”(Cumberwatch)。

His appeal is manifest, yet hard to pin down. His name is odd, Hogwartsian, suggesting both an Elizabethan actor and a baker whose products are made with rustic ingredients no one has heard of. Tall and lean, he has an other-century look about him, with his long, narrow face, his mop of crazy hair (he keeps it shorter off-duty) and bright, far-apart, almond-shaped blue eyes that on-screen can play intelligent, ardent, manic or insane, depending on the job. In "Sherlock," he looks like the sort of person who has a stratospheric I.Q. and an abysmal E.Q. but is dead sexy with it; at the same time, if you were to remark on his resemblance to an otter, you would not be the only one.

康伯巴奇的魅力顯而易見，但是要解釋這到底是一種什麼樣的魅力卻不是那麼容易。他有一個奇怪的名字，像是《哈利·波特》中霍格沃茨魔法學校中某個人物的名字。這名字讓人想到一位伊麗莎白時代的演員，或是一位使用名不見經傳的農家原料做麪包的麪包師傅（Cumberbatch中的batch有“一批烤麪包”的意思——譯註）。他身材修長消瘦，相貌古典。狹長的臉孔上頂着一頭濃密的亂髮（不演戲的時候，他留着短髮）。明亮的藍眼睛是杏仁的形狀，分得有點開。在銀幕上，這雙眼睛能根據需要表現出智慧，熱忱，狂躁，瘋狂。在《神探夏洛克》中，他飾演的人物智商超高而情商超低，但卻性感得要命。而同時，如果你覺得他長得有點像一隻河狸，那不是你一個人有這種看法。

When he sat down with a cup of coffee in a Camden pub last November and began to discuss electronic surveillance, the government, his favorite movies, his career, the rabidity of "Sherlock" fans and how coffee affects him (it makes him talk even faster), Cumberbatch had just come off an extraordinary run of work.

去年11月，康伯巴奇在倫敦卡姆登區的一個酒吧裏坐下。他要了一杯咖啡，開始談論起電子監控，政府，他喜愛的電影，他的職業，《夏洛克》粉絲們的狂熱，以及咖啡對他的影響（讓他說話更快了）。他剛完成了一連串非同尋常的工作。

"The Fifth Estate," in which he perfectly captures the slippery nature of Julian Assange — free-speech hero, treacherous colleague, possible megalomaniac — had just come out. Over the next two months, three more of his films would be released: "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," in which he gets to intone things like "I am death" in a creepy dragon voice; "12 Years a Slave," in which he plays a sympathetic slave-owner; and "August: Osage County," in which he has a small role in an ensemble of superstars like Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep.

《危機解密》剛剛上映。康伯巴奇出色地抓住了朱利安·阿桑奇讓人捉摸不定的氣質——他是一個言論自由鬥士，但對同事卻背信棄義，並有可能是個自大狂。在接下來的兩個月中，康伯巴奇參與的另外三部電影也會陸續上映。這些包括《霍比特人2：史矛革之戰》(The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug)，在裏面康伯巴奇用讓人毛骨悚然的龍的聲音說了些諸如“我是死亡”這樣的臺詞；在《爲奴12年》(12 Years a Slave)中，他扮演了一位有同情心的奴隸主；在有像茱莉亞·羅伯茨(Julia Roberts)和梅麗爾·斯特里普(Meryl Streep)等巨星助陣的《八月：奧色治郡》(August: Osage County)中，他飾演了一個小角色。

The Time cover had just hit the newsstands, and Cumberbatch was slightly freaked out. "It's one of the more bizarre levels of success," he said. At first he thought it was fake. "Someone sent me a photograph of it and I thought, ‘Some fan has got hold of a photo and done one of those neat apps where they impose your head on something,' " he said.

用他做封面的《時代》雜誌剛剛上市。康伯巴奇有點吃驚。“能得到這樣的成功實在讓人感到匪夷所思，”他說。一開始他以爲封面是假的。“有人給我發了一張封面照片，我還在想：‘肯定是哪個粉絲弄到了我給《時代》拍的照片，並用了什麼軟件把我的頭放到了雜誌封面上。'”

Also, he had had an exciting experience on a British talk show, when Harrison Ford, a fellow guest, emerged from his taciturnity to announce that he loved him as Holmes. This has been happening to Cumberbatch a lot lately, fellow actors declaring themselves fans, such as when Ted Danson saw him through a crowd of stars at a pre-awards party recently and began shouting "Sherlock!"

他不久前還在英國的一個脫口秀上出鏡。在節目中，另一位嘉賓哈里森·福特(Harrison Ford)打破了一貫的寡言少語，宣稱他非常欣賞康伯巴奇的福爾摩斯，這讓康伯巴奇激動不已。演員同行們告訴康伯巴奇自己是他的粉絲，這樣的事近來發生了不少次。在最近的一次頒獎典禮前的派對上，泰德·丹森（Ted Danson，美國老牌影星——譯註）在一羣明星中看見了他，喊道：“夏洛克”！

A few days earlier, he had wrapped his most recent movie, a biopic of the British cryptographer Alan Turing. Cumberbatch talked for a long time about the tragedy of Turing's life and about what has been a series of very intense roles, heavy on iconic fictional characters and real people. "I am so ready to play a really dumb character," he said.

幾天前，康伯巴奇剛完成了他最新一部電影的拍攝。這是一部傳記電影，主人公是英國密碼破解家艾倫·圖靈(Alan Turing)。康伯巴奇花了很長時間談論圖靈的悲劇人生，以及自己近期來飾演的一系列激烈角色——他們都是符號式的虛構人物或真實人物。“接下來我太想演一個笨蛋了，”他說。

He was born in London, to parents who were in the business — the actors Wanda Ventham and Timothy Carlton — and had his first substantial part in high school at Harrow, the famous boys' boarding school that is the Yale to Eton's Harvard. "I played the queen of the fairies," he said. (That would be Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream.")

康伯巴奇生於倫敦，父母都是演員——父親是蒂莫西·卡爾頓(Timothy Carlton)，母親是旺達·文瑟姆(Wanda Ventham)。他在哈羅公學（著名私立男校，與另一著名私立學校伊頓公學名聲不相上下——譯註）上高中時演出了第一個重要角色。“我扮演了仙女之王”。（他指的是《仲夏夜之夢》[A Midsummer Night's Dream]中的泰坦妮婭[Titania]。）

Later, when he performed in "As You Like It," an old alumnus watching the play apparently pronounced him "the best Rosalind since Vanessa Redgrave." He went to the University of Manchester and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and then slid pretty easily into work; so far he has appeared in more than 30 films and dozens of television, radio and theater productions. But it was his title performance in "Sherlock," which debuted in 2010, that propelled him to a new league.

後來，當他參演《皆大歡喜》(As You Like It)一劇時，觀衆中的一位老校友稱他爲“自瓦妮莎·雷德格雷夫（Vanessa Redgrave，英國女演員——譯註）之後最出色的羅莎琳德(Rosalind)扮演者”。他隨後到曼徹斯特大學讀書，又到倫敦音樂和戲劇學院深造，然後很順利地進入演藝圈工作；迄今他已經出演過30多部電影、十多部電視劇、廣播劇和話劇。但直到2010年由他主演的電視劇《神探夏洛克》首映，他才真正成爲一線明星。

Part of it has to do with the witty, knowing script, with its clever allusions to the old stories; and part of it has to do with Cumberbatch's sublime portrayal of the odd, brilliant, infuriating, charismatic detective. Sherlock-the-character has a fanatic following, with fans who debate every Cumberbatchian movement and every plot twist with the fervor of grassy-knoll conspiracy buffs. Cumberbatch takes care to remind them that though they might well love Sherlock, Sherlock would never love them back. "I always make it clear that people who become obsessed with him or the idea of him — he'd destroy you," Cumberbatch said cheerfully. "He is an absolute bastard."

《夏洛克》成功的原因之一在於其詼諧機智而讓人心領神會的劇本，其中有許多與原著互相映襯的情節；另外一個原因就是康伯巴奇出色的演技：他把這位怪誕而聰明絕頂、富於魅力，讓人又愛又恨的大偵探演得活靈活現。粉絲們熱情追捧他扮演的夏洛克角色，康伯巴奇的每個動作、劇情的每一步發展，都會引發粉絲們的熱烈辯論，其狂熱程度完全不亞於肯尼迪遇刺事件中的陰謀論者們。康伯巴奇還特別注意地提醒他們：他們熱愛夏洛克，但夏洛克可絕不會領這個情。“我一直清楚地表現這一點——你迷戀他，爲他癡迷，而他會玩死你，”康伯巴奇開心地說:“他是個徹頭徹尾的混蛋。”

Over a follow-up breakfast at the Algonquin Hotel in New York a few weeks later, I started to see what his public life is like. We walked there after a quick trip to my office, in which we spoke to no one but which precipitated three breathless "Is that who I think it is?" emails from normally phlegmatic colleagues in under five minutes. (He came back a couple of weeks later, and the non-phlegmatic people were gaping in the halls.) In the street we had to move quickly, because crowds form if Cumberbatch stands still for too long. In the hotel, we positioned ourselves behind a pillar, but people spotted him anyway (when they asked for autographs, they invariably asked on behalf of their teenage children).

在初次採訪之後幾個星期，在紐約阿隆金酒店再次與康伯巴奇共進早餐時，我開始瞭解他的公衆生活究竟是什麼樣的。早餐前，我們在我的辦公室短暫停留了一下，並未與任何人交談，但在短短五分鐘內，三位平日裏都很穩重的同事興奮地給我發來郵件：“難道這真的是他？”（幾個星期後，他又來過一回；這次，那些不那麼沉穩的同事們在走廊裏驚訝得閉不上嘴）。走在街上，我們要健步如飛；他稍作停頓，就會有一羣人圍上來。在酒店裏，我們坐在一根柱子後面，但還是有人認出了他（當他們來要簽名時，永遠都是說爲了他們十幾歲的孩子）。

As good a sport as Cumberbatch is, he sometimes finds it a bit too much. Filming "Sherlock" last year in Cardiff, Wales, he had an awkward interlude when he had to walk from his trailer to his car wearing a costume that, had anyone seen it, might have become a major plot spoiler. When he failed in his efforts to get a particularly persistent paparazzo not to photograph him, Cumberbatch shrouded himself in a hoodie ("I looked like Kenny in ‘South Park'") and held up a sign he had hastily fashioned that said: "Go photograph Egypt and show the world something important."

即使康伯巴奇這樣性格隨和的人，有時候也會受不了。去年在威爾士卡迪夫拍《神探夏洛克》時，出了這麼一段尷尬事件：他需要身着戲裝從化妝車走到自己的車裏，戲裝如果被人看到，就會嚴重泄露劇情。他屢次試圖擺脫一個固執的狗仔攝影師都沒成功，最後只好套上一件帽衫（“我看起來就像是《南方公園》裏面的肯尼”），舉起一個匆匆寫就的牌子：“去拍埃及吧，讓世界看到點重要的東西。”

The move was lampooned by the British newspapers, particularly when, to the delight of hundreds of fans massed on the street in London for another shoot, Cumberbatch did it again, this time with signs printed with provocative questions about democracy, government intrusion, journalism and the battle between liberty and security in the war on terror. "These are very complex questions and very difficult arguments to be very clear about, so to ask the questions is to stimulate the debate," he explained. He has not done it since, though, he said, "I felt really strongly about it at the time."

此舉遭到某些英國報紙的抨擊。讓粉絲們興奮不已的是，康伯巴奇後來又這樣做了一次，這次他的紙片上面寫滿了關於民主、政府侵犯個人隱私、新聞以及在反恐戰爭中自由與安全的矛盾等引人深思的問題。“這些都是很複雜的問題和難以解釋清楚的論點，所以提出這些問題就是爲激發討論，”他解釋道。儘管此後他並未故伎重演，但他說“我當時對這些問題感想很強烈。”

In New York he was visiting his friend Zachary Quinto, who acted alongside him in "Star Trek," seeing some movies, going to some museums and trying to keep a low profile.

康伯巴奇在紐約拜訪了他的朋友——和他一起出演《星際迷航》的扎克瑞·昆圖(Zachary Quinto)，看了幾場電影，逛了逛博物館，並試圖保持低調。

He is currently unattached, and is gearing up for his next batch of work. One question that has excited "Star Trek" fans is whether his character, who all but stole the last film, will appear in the next one. There is certainly that possibility: He ended the film frozen in a pod and stored away in space. ("That was a stupid thing to do," Cumberbatch said, referring to Starfleet Command. "They should have just blown me up.")

現在還是單身的康伯巴奇正在爲他下一輪工作做準備。讓粉絲們感到興奮不已的一個問題是，他在《星際迷航》中搶盡風頭的角色會不會出現在續集中。這是有可能的：電影結束時，可汗被凍在一個冷凍倉裏，放逐到茫茫宇宙中。（“這可真不是明智之舉，”康伯巴奇指的是星際艦隊指揮部：“他們應該直接把我炸死。”）

He pulled a cap over his head and prepared again to withstand the public. He says he has a way of negotiating big-city crowds: "If you pick a point far behind them they perceive you as not seeing them, and you're the obstacle they have to get around." For a moment, he sounded positively Sherlockian. "There is a way of just shadowing through," he continued. "The higher the walls, the more dark the windows, the bigger the sunglasses — the more people are going to look. The greatest disguise is learning how to be invisible in plain sight."

離開時，康伯巴奇在頭上戴了頂帽子，又一次做好了和公衆打交道的準備。他說在大城市的人羣中穿行他有自已的一套辦法：“如果你目光聚焦在他們身後很遠的地方，他們會以爲你沒有看見他們，這樣你就成了人羣不得不繞開的障礙物。”這會兒他聽上去跟夏洛克沒什麼兩樣：“總有辦法混跡於人羣之中，”他接着說道：“牆越高，窗戶越黑，墨鏡越大，就越會引人注意。最好的僞裝術就是學會在光天化日之下變成隱身人。”