By Reuters
February 18, 2025 – 3:46 PM PST
BERLIN (Reuters) – Benedict Cumberbatch was overtaken by grief at unexpected moments while playing a widower in his new family drama “The Thing With Feathers,” the British actor said on Tuesday in Berlin.
“Odd moments would just sideswipe me,” Cumberbatch told journalists about the film, playing in the Berlin Film Festival’s non-competitive Special section.
He recalled how one scene of his character folding his dead wife’s clothes and putting them in a box caught him off guard.
“I’m 48. I’ve been through a bit. I’ve lived. I’ve experienced grief,” he said. “It just really struck a chord.”
Cumberbatch stars as the father of two young sons whose wife has unexpectedly died, and he begins to receive visits from a large, otherworldly crow figure that eventually forces the family to confront their grief.
Part of the role involved letting go and not trying to control what grief should look like, said Cumberbatch, who made a name for himself by playing Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Strange.
“It sounds perverse when talking about grief, but as far as the artistry of making something feel or look or be real in that moment for a character, you just leave it alone and it happens,” he said.
The film, which was adapted from the book “Grief is the Thing with Feathers” by Max Porter, is British filmmaker Dylan Southern’s debut fiction feature.
“I had never read anything like it, it’s so dense with kind of profound ideas and character detail, but it’s packed into a tiny little novella,” Southern told Reuters about the book.
The director of documentaries such as “No Distance Left to Run,” about the band Blur, said he wanted to capture the experience of grieving with the family that the book conveys.
“It was kind of a challenging but really rewarding kind of project to dive into,” he said.
Reporting by Hanna Rantala, Swantje Stein and Miranda Murray; Editing by Leslie Adler
