Lose the chip, Benedict — all actors have a class range

 
15 August 2012
WEST END FINAL

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Really, how posh do you have to be to stop moaning about it?

The lynx-like Benedict Cumberbatch is the latest well-bred thesp to complain (for the second time) that he is barred from some coveted roles because he is an old Harrovian who oozes the confidence of his class. This is, of course, precisely why we like him in the first place, whether as Sherlock combining dysfunctionality with brilliance or in sundry other roles that make the best of his louche self-certainty. The additional moan that he wasn’t born into “new money” requires no further comment beyond, perhaps, a Sherlockian “No, you weren’t.”

As for the solution to the “too-posh” problem, Mr Cumberbatch has grasped the wrong end of the stick. The solution to Britain’s inverted snobbery, he says, might well be for him to leg it to America.

Ah, yes: this would be the country that gave us the perpetual screen toff. the land that considers Ralph Fiennes and Rupert Everett to be your average British bloke. Benedict, as your unofficial agent, I would strongly advise against trying to shake off class constraints by flouncing off to the States. The posher we are, the more they like us. Exceptions are made only for Michael Caine and David Beckham.

The reason all this rankles with us non-Harrovian ranks is that the one pleasure you forfeit as product of a very comfortable background and a splendid education leading to a deservedly glorious career is the right to whine.

For you are not the ones losing out in the great unfair race of life: Gray’s Elegy to a “youth to fortune and fame unknown” in that country churchyard was not written with this sort of plight in mind.

It is also a remarkably quick way to put off even your most ardent fans, me included. The equally gifted Helena Bonham Carter had precisely the same effect when she complained about the roles she wasn’t getting, on the curious grounds that being Asquith’s great-grand-daughter and a gorgeous product of South Hampstead High School was a terrible cross to bear.

This elicited the unbeatable riposte from the earthy actress, Kathy Burke: “As a lifelong member of the non-pretty working classes, I would like to say to Helena Bonham Carter: shut up, you stupid ****.” I would not indulge in Ms Burke’s lively mode of expression but the sentiment doesn’t half ring true.

There are also good professional reasons why actors end up with a class range in their work. Ms Burke probably isn’t aiming to replace Dame Maggie Smith in Downton: though, on closer inspection, Maggie has acquired her patina of poshness from a reasonably modest background, while Helena is well-equipped to remind us in The King’s Speech that “it’s ma’am as in ham, not marm as in farm”. It isn’t so much birth that matters as a comfortable range. The best actors understand that, so Daniel Craig never tried to compete with Sean Connery on class: he simply reinvented Bond as a more awkward and angular character.

I’m sure something like this will befall Mr Cumberbatch. He has the great gift of his trade; mesmeric watchability and the capacity to disconcert as well as entertain audiences. The one thing he might lose along the way is the inverted chip. It never sits well on any shoulder.

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