Benedict Cumberbatch has called Alan
Turing “a gay icon” who should be on bank notes.
Cumberbatch plays mathematician Turing
in the just opened film The Imitation Game.
On Monday, producers of the film
released a clip from the film in which Turing is seen coming out to
British intelligence officer John Cairncross (played by Allen Leech).
(The video is embedded on this page. Visit
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Cumberbatch's portrayal of the gay code
breaker convicted of gross indecency has garnered wide acclaim and an
early Oscar buzz.
“It seems unbelievable that someone
who is a war hero, someone who is the father of the modern computer
age – and a gay icon – could remain in such relative obscurity to
the scale of his achievements in his brief time on this planet,”
Cumberbatch told AwardsLine.
“One of the main reasons I was really
attracted to playing him was to try and bring his story to as wide an
audience as possible. It still seems unfathomable to me that Turing
is not on bank notes; that he’s not on the front cover of a
textbook. I’m serious. I mean, Newton and Darwin are on bank
notes for Christ’s sake. This man, as acknowledged by Steve Jobs
and Bill Gates and other titans of the digital age… was the
forefather of modern computing. He was an extraordinarily important
man. I just think he should be celebrated as a social-cultural hero
as well as someone of extraordinary importance in the scientific and
modern worlds,” he added.