Benedict Cumberbatch Family History
Benedict Cumberbatch Family History – The purchase of an £8.1 million property in the Somerset countryside by Hollywood star Benedict Cumberbatch was made public earlier this week. While the actor is well known for playing parts like Sherlock and Doctor Strange that received critical praise, his family history has also garnered notice throughout the years.
His own words: Benedict Cumberbatch’s family’s involvement in the slave trade
Thousands of people benefited from the slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries, including Cumberbatch’s forefathers. At the price of millions of slaved Africans, the sugar plantations of the Caribbean contributed to Britain becoming the richest nation in the world.
The actor’s slave-owning forefathers formerly possessed St Nicholas Abbey, one of the greatest palaces in the West Indies. The Jacobean-style property served as the focal point of a sizable plantation where the Cumberbatch family amassed a sizeable wealth.
A picture of Abraham Cumberbatch, Benedict’s seventh great-grandfather and the first member of his family to acquire slaves, is displayed within the mansion. According to reports, the family possessed 250 slaves in Barbados and received compensation worth about £3.5 million when the British Empire outlawed the evil trade.
To escape reparations claims from the descendants of slaves, Cumberbatch’s family pushed him to take a different name when he started his acting career. He made the decision to forego doing so, and he has since been outspoken about racial prejudice in the acting industry as well as honest about his family history.
“We have our past – you don’t have to look far to see the slave-owning past,” he told The Telegraph in 2018. It’s shocking that we were involved in the sugar industry as a whole.
During a 2015 interview on the late-night talk show Tavis Smiley, Cumberbatch criticised the dearth of possibilities for black performers in the UK. He claimed that their chances of success in Hollywood are much higher than those in Britain.
“These actors paid their dues for years by just putting on beautiful performances,” he remarked. I believe that in the UK, things become incredibly challenging for [these] actors.
Many of my friends have had better prospects here (in the US) than in the UK, and that needs to change, he continued. He was criticised for his choice of words after the interview, underscoring the importance of using the right phrase when talking about race. He quickly apologised for the occurrence.
“I feel like the total fool I am, and while I’m sorry to have offended people and to have done so in such a public way, please know that I have learned from my mistakes. I sincerely apologise once more to anyone I may have upset with this careless use of inappropriate language over a subject close to my heart and one that impacts friends of mine.
In the Oscar-winning film 12 Years a Slave, Cumberbatch played plantation owner William Ford in 2012. The 1853 recollection of Ford’s former slave Solomon Northup serves as the inspiration for the movie.
The future Somerset resident painted the plantation owner as a sympathetic and considerate person. There has never been a more kind, noble, honest, or Christian man than William Ford, as stated in Northup’s memoir.
In the movie Amazing Grace, which examines Britain’s abolishment of the slave trade in 1807, Cumberbatch also plays William Pitt the Younger. It has been stated that he accepted this position as an act of regret for his tarnished family background.
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