Benedict Cumberbatch talks about his kidnapping in South Africa

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch spoke about a traumatic event in 2004 in an interview with. He was kidnapped in Santa Lucia, South Africa while filming the BBC miniseries “To the Ends of the Earth.” Cumberbatch compared the experience to a near-death experience.

“It gave me a sense of time, but not necessarily a good one,” said the 48-year-old. “It made me impatient to live a less ordinary life, and I still struggle with that impatience.” According to the article, Cumberbatch and his friends had a flat tire on the way back from a diving trip. While they were stuck, they were kidnapped by six men who robbed the group and forced them to drive them around for hours. Eventually the men left her tied up outside and fled.

The experience turned him into an adrenaline junkie and someone who goes skydiving or does other extreme sports to relax. “The near-death experience amplified all of that,” Cumberbatch said. “I thought, ‘Oh yeah, I could die at any moment.’ I threw myself out of planes and took all sorts of risks. But other than my parents, I had no real family at that point.”

Things are different now, after all, the actor has been married since 2015 and is now the father of three sons. The search for adrenaline is therefore no longer an issue for him. “I looked outside the box, which made me familiar with what lies beneath. And I accepted that this is the end of all our stories,” said the 48-year-old.

Speaking about fatherhood, Cumberbatch, whose children are six, seven and nine, said: “Once you have children, the sense of time sinks in a lot deeper. My youngest is six tomorrow and I think, ‘I’ll be in my sixties, when he’s 21. It’s crazy. As a father, your priorities “shift enormously” and you value what you do in your life “completely differently.”