“Dating Her is Like Wearing Hot Lava.”: These Wild Facts About Celebrities Left Us Speechless

Benedict Cumberbatch became famous for playing brilliant, controlled characters like Sherlock Holmes, but one frightening real-life experience was completely outside his control. Years before Sherlock made him internationally known, he was filming a BBC project in South Africa when he and others were caught in a robbery. The situation escalated into a terrifying abduction.

Cumberbatch later spoke about how deeply the experience affected him, especially because he did not know whether he would survive it. That makes his calm public image feel very different. Before he became a global star, he had already lived through the kind of danger most actors only pretend to face.