Do you know, you can always spot them,” Sax said. “I remember working with people like Paul Bettany and David Morrissey early on in their careers, and you just know, and I knew with Benedict Cumberbatch. I just felt that he had an extraordinary quality to him. It was a very small part, but given that it was so small, he has so much dignity playing it. And certainly, Sally [Hawkins], who was already getting a little bit of a name for herself.”
It's actually really hard to find anything embarrassing Benedict Cumberbatch has done, because he's had a pretty focused attitude to his career since his earliest roles. Still, his current role in the genius new Patrick Melrose - in which he plays an aristocratic playboy dealing with substance abuse - is a far cry from his early role as a scruffy cockney in TV mini-series Tipping The Velvet. See him in action below.