WATCH: Benedict Cumberbatch speaks emotionally about Alan Turing
Benedict Cumberbatch has given an impassioned speech about late gay codebreaker and computer genius Alan Turing.
Cumberbatch was accepting the ensemble cast award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival last night, for his portrayal of Turing in the feature film ‘The Imitation Game’.
He said: “Alan Turing was a war hero, he was a gay icon and he was and is the father of modern computing science. He is a man who died tragically early due to a Government that he helped free from fascism by his work in the Second World War in cracking the enigma code, rewarding him for his nature, for confessing to who he was as a gay man in a time of intolerance in the 1950s.”
Cumberbatch attracted criticism after he defended the absence of gay sex in the film, saying: “If you need to see that to understand that he’s gay, then all is lost for any kind of subtle storytelling. It’s not something that needed to be made obvious.”
However, The Sunday Times reported that there was indeed a sex scene involving Turing and another man present in early drafts – but it was mysteriously left out of the final version.
