Benedict Cumberbatch is "intrigued" by the psychedelic ’60s.
The 40-year-old actor stars as the titular character in Marvel’s upcoming ‘Doctor Strange’ movie – the comic which was conceived during a time when creator Stan Lee was obsessed with cosmology and incantations – and has said he took on the role because the "spiritualism" of that era interested him.
He said: "I was intrigued by all of this. The experimental drugs, cults, psychedelics, spiritualism. Back then, people used those ideas to explore stuff they didn’t understand. It was a form of bargaining. Now, we know a lot more."
And this isn’t the first time the ‘Sherlock’ star has delved into something a little more "hippy", as he previously spent a year teaching at a Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Nepal – until he and his friends got lost in the mountains during a hiking trip.
He said: "I used to teach English to monks in the morning. We drank rainwater squeezed out of moss, we got altitude sickness, I had dysentery."
But roles such as ‘Doctor Strange’ are perfect for the star – who now has 16-month-old son Christopher with his wife Sophie Hunter – as he says he isn’t "rational at all", and is constantly trying to "understand things in the universe."
He explained: "I’m not rational at all. I hit walls trying to understand things in the universe. Things on a molecular level, or circadian rhythms. Those are fascinating, they’re hard-wired into us. Every form of life has a circadian rhythm, from a cellular fungus to a human, to regulate our body clock. I think there’s spirituality in science, there’s wonder in logic, and the world just gets bizarre the more you think about it."
‘The Imitation Game’ actor also claims doing a superhero movie wasn’t something he thought he’d ever do.
He told ShortList magazine: "It wasn’t on my bucket list. But I was into superhero comics when I was younger – I liked Tim Burton’s ‘Batman’. I had the posters on my wall. In the playground we’d listen to the Prince soundtrack and do imitations of Jack Nicholson."