Benedict Cumberbatch talks 'quiet' role in 'The Imitation Game'

LONDON, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- Benedict Cumberbatch says his role in The Imitation Game is much different than his character on Sherlock.

The 38-year-old actor detailed his role in the history-based thriller at the BFI London Film Festival on Wednesday. Cumberbatch portrays real-life mathematician Alan Turing in the film, and said the character required a different approach than Sherlock.

"[Turing] doesn't swish around in a coat and curly hair, demonstrating how brilliant he is; he's a very quiet, stoic and yeah, someone who is smart," the actor related. "But the way he has to operate as an outsider and as someone who is at all different is something that was very much out of the conditions of his life. I didn't read the script and go, 'Oh, this is Sherlock in tweed, messing around with valves."

The Imitation Game relates the story of Turing, a brilliant logician who helped break Nazi Enigma codes during WWII. Although his work contributed greatly to the Allied effort, he was criminally prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952, and died of an apparent suicide at age 41 in 1954.

"The idea of getting a broader story out there, a broader picture of him to a broader audience, is something that does bear a certain weight of importance," Cumberbatch shared. "It's part of a momentum I hope to have him at the forefront of the recognition he deserves as a scientist, as a father of the modern computer age and a man who lived in an uncompromising life in the time of disgusting discrimination."

The Imitation Game will open in theaters Nov. 21. Cumberbatch is scheduled for Penguins of Madagascar and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies later this year.