Benedict Cumberbatch has explained why he doesn’t want his children going to a boarding school like he did.
The actor - who has three sons with his director wife Sophie Hunter - attended the all-boys private school Brambletye in West Sussex as a child.
The Imitation Game star then went onto the all-boys boarding school Harrow in greater London, where the annual fees are over £60,000.
A slew of famous faces are among the alumni at the establishment, including Lord Byron, James Blunt, and Winston Churchill.
Cumberbatch said he “selfishly” doesn’t want sons Christopher, Hal, and Finn to follow in his footsteps.
“Not unless they really want to, but no way,” he told the Daily Mail.
The Sherlock star actor added: “And Sophie [feels] the same.
“Selfishly, I want them around – I still want to be there, in case the call comes, [when] the fall happens, I wanna be there.”
He did, however, praise Harrow’s “amazing facilities and very structured timetable”.
Cumberbatch - whose latest film is the drama The Thing With Feathers - previously admitted he felt like he’d disappointed his actor parents Wanda Ventham and dad Timothy Carlton by going into the film industry.
He revealed they had “scrimped and saved” to send him to Harrow so he could become a doctor or lawyer.
“They scrimped and saved to get their only son the very best education possible,” he told The Lady magazine.
“And I took that education, threw it all in their face and became an actor anyway. To this day, one of the reasons I get out of bed in the morning is to make them proud of me.”
The Doctor Strange star has also opened up about the “incredible homophobia” he witnessed at his school and how he fought to change his fellow pupils’ perceptions.
“In an all-male boarding school, in the olden days, it was seen as being something that ‘just happened’ since there were no girls, so you had a bit of an experience,” he told The Daily Beast in 2014.
“But there was incredible homophobia at my school, to the point where two boys who were caught doing something were literally chased down the street.”
He recalled being 18 when he witnessed students hurling homophobic abuse at two boys who were discovered in bed together.
“I was just finishing an essay in the school dining hall at breakfast, and I looked out the window and heard a commotion, a pair of feet scampering by, and then a horde just charging after shouting, ‘W*****s! F*****s!’ and I thought, ‘What the f**k is going on?’” he recounted.
“I asked these kids coming back from the house who were breathless from the hunt, ‘What are you doing, you insane idiots? What the f**k?’”
He recalled saying to them: “You’ve really got to wake up to the fact that the world is full of disgusting prejudice because we are all different from one another. You have to learn acceptance at this school, and you have to go into the world as a better person, and you have to try and embrace the fact that people are different rather than defining yourself by not being like them.”
The actor is a passionate advocate of the LGBTQ+ community. He officiated the gay marriage of his friends, Seth Cummings and Rob Rinder, in Ibiza in July 2013.
