Sherlock's wedding: why Benedict Cumberbatch announced his engagement

Who is this woman?

He got married on a romantic day, February 14, 2020. At the time of the wedding, the newlyweds had known each other for 6 years. Benedict's wife was actress, director and playwright Sophie Hunter , who comes from a respectable English family. Sophie's grandfather, the Queen's aide-de-camp Sir James Mac Glow, worked for Queen Elizabeth II's security detail in Scotland.

Sophie Hunter has a degree in French and Italian from Oxford University. Having received a solid education, Sophie decided to pursue what had always interested her - theater and cinema.

Sophie attended the Jacques Lecoq Theater School in Paris, then continued her studies at the Saratoga International Theater School in New York.

Sophie became known to the public from the series “Great Performances”, “Macbeth” and “The Curse of Steptoe”. As a director, she staged the opera The Rape of Lucretia in New York in 2011. As well as the opera “The Magic Flute” based on the works of Mozart.

Sophie Hunter has also worked successfully as a playwright: in 2007 she received the prestigious Samuel Beckett Award for writing and directing the avant-garde play The Terrific Electric.

Childhood and youth

Sophie Hunter was born in London on March 16, 1978. Zodiac sign: Pisces. Her father was Charles Hunter, originally from the capital of Great Britain, and her mother was Anna Catherine Gow, who came to London from Edinburgh. Therefore, the childhood years of the future actress and director were spent in these two atmospheric cities.

Actress Sophie Hunter

Since childhood, Sophie has been seriously involved in playing the piano and vocals. But music became only Hunter’s favorite hobby. The girl successfully graduated from the Oxford School of Foreign Languages, where she mastered French and Italian perfectly, after which she decided to make significant adjustments to her destiny and went to Paris.

Sophie was interested in acting from an early age. Therefore, the first step in the French capital was obvious to her: she entered the School of Theater. Jacques Lecoq, which to this day is considered one of the most respectable studios of gesture and facial expressions.

Love story and wedding

Benedict and Sophie met on the set of the film Burlesque Tales in 2009. But whether their romance began at that moment is unknown. The lovers carefully hid their relationship. The couple came to the restaurant separately, and the press was able to catch them only at the Roland Garos Cup in 2014.

Benedict Cambeebatch's personal life before his marriage to Sophie Hunter was not very wild. The actor had a 12-year romance with a little-known actress Olivia Poulet, who left him, not wanting to put up with unexpectedly high-profile fame.

The actor experienced the breakup painfully; it was during this period that he had one after another novels: Liv Tyler, Alice Eve, Russian model Katya Elizarova. Benedict clearly did not like the life of a lightweight playboy. After all, in his soul he still strived to find true love and create a family.

“A woman should not put everything she has on display in order to appear sexy. A woman must be smart, and with the help of her own mind make me feel smart, then she is sexy,” was Benedict’s intricate demand for a potential chosen one. Sophie possessed this quality, and apparently some other set of qualities.

English restraint, natural aristocracy, and the ability to follow traditions prompted Benedict Cumberbatch to propose.

Cumberbatch even gave the traditional announcement in a special section of the ancient British newspaper The Times: “Benedict, son of Wanda and Timothy Cumberbatch of London, and Sophie, daughter of Catherine Hunter of Edinburgh and Charles Hunter of London, announce their engagement.” Benedict explained that even if he were not famous, he would have done the same. This is just a tribute to tradition.

Sophie Hunter now

Now Sophie Hunter spends most of her life caring for her family and children. While the actress’s husband continues to shine on the screens, Sophie has withdrawn from participating in theatrical projects. But this state of affairs does not bother the director, because at all special events she appears hand in hand with Benedict.

Sophie Hunter and Benedict Cumberbatch

The birth of children did not affect Sophie’s appearance at all. Together with her husband, she makes up a couple that fans consider a style icon. For their wardrobe, both spouses choose a clothing style that combines extravagance and British elegance.

Three months after the birth of her second child, Sophie Hunter participated as a narrator at the Aldeburgh Summer Play Festival, where she read works by Ovid, John Dryden and Ted Hughes. And at the beginning of 2020, Sophie and her husband attended a gala concert organized by the Swiss watch house Jaeger-LeCoultre. The couple went to Europe after Benedict was announced as the new president of the London Academy of Music and Performing Arts, which the artist himself graduated from in 2000.

Wedding in the family estate

The wedding ceremony took place on the Isle of Wight, in an ancient church of the 12th century. The reception took place at the Mottison estate , located nearby. This estate was owned by Sophia Hunter's ancestors for many years. In the mid-twentieth century, it was handed over to the National Trust - this was what many heirs of castles and estates did at that time.

On the one hand, they got rid of the need to pay for the expensive maintenance of their estates. On the other hand, the heirs were allowed to live in part of the premises. The bride's relatives still live on the Mottison estate, so the spirit of England and respect for glorious traditions permeated the entire celebration.

There were about forty guests in total, and the time for the wedding was chosen not only because of the romance of the date (February 14), but also because of the weather conditions.

The piercing wind and nasty rain protected the lovers from prying eyes, and made the wedding truly conservative

Excerpt characterizing Hunter, Sophie

She nodded her curly red head proudly. It was very funny to watch her, as the girl was truly and seriously proud of what she managed to create. And who wouldn’t be proud?!. She was a perfect baby who, laughing, casually, created new incredible worlds for herself, and immediately replaced the boring ones with others, like gloves... To be honest, there was something to be shocked by. I tried to understand what was going on here?.. Stella was clearly dead, and her essence was communicating with me all this time. But where we were and how she created these “worlds” of hers was still a complete mystery to me. – Is there something you don’t understand? – the girl was surprised. – To be honest, yes! – I exclaimed frankly. – But you can do much more? – the little girl was even more surprised. “More?..” I asked, dumbfounded. She nodded, tilting her red head comically to the side. -Who showed you all this? – I asked carefully, afraid of accidentally offending her. - Well, of course, grandma. – As if she said something for granted. – At the beginning I was very sad and lonely, and my grandmother felt very sorry for me. So she showed me how it's done. And then I finally realized that this was truly her world, created only by the power of her thoughts. This girl didn't even realize what a treasure she was! But my grandmother, I think, understood this very well... As it turned out, Stella died in a car accident several months ago, in which her entire family also died. All that was left was grandma, for whom there was simply no room in the car that time... And who almost went crazy when she learned about her terrible, irreparable misfortune. But, what was most strange, Stella did not end up, as everyone usually did, on the same levels in which her family was. Her body possessed a high essence, which after death went to the highest levels of the Earth. And thus the girl was left completely alone, since her mother, father and older brother were apparently the most ordinary, ordinary people who were not distinguished by any special talents. – Why don’t you find someone here, where you live now? – I asked again carefully. – I found... But they are all kind of old and serious... not like you and me. – The girl whispered thoughtfully. Suddenly she suddenly smiled cheerfully and her sweet little face immediately began to shine like a bright sun. - Do you want me to show you how to do it? I just nodded in agreement, very afraid that she would change her mind. But the girl was clearly not going to “change her mind”, on the contrary - she was very happy to have found someone who was almost her same age, and now, if I understood something, she was not going to let me go so easily... This “prospect” I was completely satisfied, and I prepared to listen carefully about its incredible wonders... “Everything here is much easier than on Earth,” Stella chirped, very pleased with the attention she received, “you just have to forget about the “level” you’re at so far.” still live (!) and focus on what you want to see. Try to imagine it very accurately and it will come. I tried to disconnect from all extraneous thoughts, but it didn’t work. For some reason this has always been difficult for me. Then, finally, everything disappeared somewhere, and I was left hanging in complete emptiness... A feeling of Complete Peace appeared, so rich in its completeness that it was impossible to experience on Earth... Then the emptiness began to be filled with a fog sparkling in all the colors of the rainbow, which became more and more became denser, becoming like a brilliant and very dense ball of stars... Smoothly and slowly this “ball” began to unravel and grow until it looked like a gigantic sparkling spiral, stunning in its beauty, the end of which was “sprayed” by thousands of stars and went somewhere into an invisible distance... I looked dumbfounded at this fabulous unearthly beauty, trying to understand how and where it came from?.. It couldn’t even occur to me that I had truly created this in my imagination... And yet, I never I could get rid of the very strange feeling that THIS is my real home... - What is this?.. - a thin voice asked in a stunned whisper. Stella stood “frozen” in a stupor, unable to make even the slightest movement, and with eyes as round as large saucers, she observed this incredible beauty that had unexpectedly fallen from somewhere... Suddenly the air around swayed violently, and a luminous creature appeared right in front of us. It looked very similar to my old “crowned” star friend, but it was clearly someone else. Having recovered from the shock and examined him more closely, I realized that he was not at all like my old friends. It’s just that the first impression “fixed” the same ring on the forehead and similar power, but otherwise there was nothing in common between them. All the “guests” who had come to me before were tall, but this creature was very tall, probably somewhere around a full five meters. His strange sparkling clothes (if they could be called that) fluttered all the time, scattering sparkling crystal tails behind them, although not the slightest breeze was felt around. Long, silver hair shone with a strange lunar halo, creating the impression of “eternal cold” around his head... And his eyes were the kind that it would be better to never look at!.. Before I saw them, even in my wildest imagination it was impossible imagine such eyes!.. They were an incredibly bright pink color and sparkled with a thousand diamond stars, as if lighting up every time he looked at someone. It was completely unusual and breathtakingly beautiful...

Family life of a lady and a gentleman

Cumberbatch almost immediately bought a nice house in California. The house is valued at approximately $11 million. Sophie did not disappoint her husband, who was striving for fatherhood. In 2020, she gave birth to his first child, son Christopher Carlton Cumberbatch.

In the fall of 2016, at the premiere of the film Doctor Stange, Benedict himself announced to reporters that he would soon become a father for the second time. In March 2016, the couple had a second son , who was named by the “Shakespearean” name Hal. Shakespeare used this nickname for Henry V in his plays.

Filmography

Photo of the star couple