Benedict Cumberbatch is called one of the most talented and original actors of our time. This is why it came as no surprise to anyone that Cumberbatch married Sophie Hunter, who had already done a lot for British culture.
Sophie Hunter is an English avant-garde artist, theater and opera director, playwright and actress.
Childhood and youth
Sophie Irene Hunter was born on March 16, 1978 in Hammersmith, London, UK, to Anna Catharine and Charles Rupert. Her parents divorced a few years after her birth, and the girl's father soon remarried. Sophie grew up in Hammersmith. She has two younger brothers - Timothy and Patrick, as well as two siblings from her father's second marriage.
Sophie Hunter belongs to a wealthy British family. Her maternal great-great-grandfather was a World War I politician and her maternal grandfather was the adjutant general of the Queen of England.
Sophie received an excellent education. She attended St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith. After that, she entered Oxford University to study modern languages with a specialization in French and Italian.
For a while, Sophie worked as a model with photographer Michael Roberts and moved to Paris after graduating from Oxford University. She then entered the Jacques Lecoq International Theater School to study theatrical art. She subsequently studied at the Saratogu International Theater Institute in New York under the direction of American theater and opera director Anna Bogart.
Career in cinema and theater
In 2004, Sophie Hunter made her television debut, playing supporting roles in the detective series Murders in Midsomer and in the action movie Keen Eddie. The actress also starred in Mira Nair's historical drama Vanity Fair. Her other notable on-screen projects include The Curse of Steptoe, Henry VIII: The Tyrant's Mind, and The Torch.
In 2005, Sophie played Ophelia in Hamlet at the Al Bustan Festival in Beirut. In the same year, she starred in the television film Friends and Crocodiles. She also recorded a French album called The Isis Project with Guy Chambers and appeared in the plays Silverland and Macbeth. Despite the fact that the girl played in good films already at the beginning of her career, her main love was theater.
Hunter co-founded the Boileroom theater company and received the prestigious Oxford Samuel Beckett Theater Trust Award for her 2007 production of The Fabulous Electrician. "Terrific Electrician" also marked her directorial debut.
Sophie also co-founded the Lacuna Theater Company and was associate director of Enron at the Royal Court Theater in the West End and Broadhurst Theater on Broadway. She was also the creative director for the 2011 New York production of Sleep No More.
Sophie became famous for her avant-garde plays. She has directed and performed in theater productions throughout Europe, North America and the Middle East. Her experimental play 69 °, also known as The Shackleton Project, was an incredible success.
In 2017, together with Nicholas Daniel, Sophie worked as a storyteller in the film Music on the Meare at the Aldeburg Festival. In the same year, she was announced as the producer of the film adaptation of The End Where We Begin. Sophie Hunter is a respected theatrical figure with a large following both in life and on social media.
Personal life and marriage with Benedict Cumberbatch
Ever since her studies at Oxford, Sophie met with the sculptor Konrad Shawcross for many years. In 2009, on the set of Burlesque Tales, the actress met Benedict Cumberbatch. Then there was no romantic relationship between them, because Sophie was absorbed in her relationship with Konrad. However, in 2010, the couple broke up. A few years later, Hunter began dating Benedict Cumberbatch, and they got married in 2015. Spouses prefer to keep their personal lives private. Even everyone found out about their engagement from the newspapers: in the best English traditions, Benedict's parents published several phrases about this in one of the issues of The Times.
The wedding was attended by about 40 guests, and the location of the ceremony was chosen in such a way as to avoid the cameras of the paparazzi.
Currently, Sophie and Benedict are raising two sons - Christopher Carton and Hal Auden. In mid-2019, another baby is due to be born in the Cumberbatch family.
