Queen honours Imitation Game star Benedict Cumberbatch
The Queen is to award a CBE to Benedict Cumberbatch, who played gay war hero Alan Turing in the Imitation Game.
The star of Sherlock was awarded the honour to recognise his services to the performing arts and to charity.
Cumberbatch lost out on an Oscar and a BAFTA for the role.
Speaking at about Alan Turing during the Palm Springs International Film Festival in January, Cumberbatch 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.”
In 2013, he officiated at a same-sex civil partnership for one of his closest friends.
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.
