It seems like forever since people have started saying that 'this is gonna be Benedict Cumberbatch's big year'. It was 2011, when he was in Oscar Best Picture nominee War Horse and was so brilliant in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. And his profile on TV's Sherlock has certainly helped keep awareness of him high online. But it was 2013 that was due to be his big break, with major credits in five hyped-about films. And yet, it wasn't to be, even though we can still say with some confidence that, indeed, his star has never yet been bigger. It was all about him in the promotional material for Star Trek Into Darkness, but then that film ended up disappointing everyone, and Zachary Quinto ended up upstaging Benedict. He voiced the character of Smaug in The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, but then people weren't terribly interested after the underwhelming An Unexpected Journey, and we couldn't even see his face regardless. He's one part of the enormous ensemble of big names in August: Osage County, but by the sound of things John Wells and Tracy Letts made a bit of a mess of that, and he's generated no awards buzz for his performance. Ditto The fifth Estate, which flopped gigantically, despite Cumberbatch's genuinely outstanding central perf. He's even in this year's Oscar frontrunner, 12 Years a Slave, but there too, buzz has been non-existent for Benny, with several of his co-stars reaping far more credit than him. Nevertheless, if things didn't go quite as planned for the actor last year, he can still claim to be among the most popular actors in the business right now, and serious awards consideration is probably just around the corner.
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