Benedict's favourite 'Cumberbitch': Meet Sophie Hunter, Sherlock’s bride-to-be

Editors Note: ‘Cumberbitch’ is the colloquial term that fans of the actor Benedict Cumberbatch call themselves. Bendict Cumberbatch broke thousands of hearts today after he announced his engagement to his girlfriend, actress Sophie Hunter, in a notice in today’s Times. And, before you get outraged with the term ‘Cumberbitch’, well that’s what the Sherlock star’s fans term themselves as. Obviously, Hunter is Benedict’s biggest fan, and the most favourite of the man himself. The Twitter handle of the fan page of Benedict is called @Cumberbitches. The Telegraph quoted reports suggesting Cumberbatch has secretly married his fiancée, at a hidden location. So, who is Sophie Hunter? [caption id=“attachment_1789347” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Benedict Cumberbatch with Sophie Hunter. Image from ibnlive[/caption] Sophie Hunter is a 36-year-old Oxford graduate, actress and an award-winning theatre director. In 2007, she received the Samuel Beckett Award for writing and directing the avant-garde play The Terrific Electric at the Barbican Centre. She directed the North American tour of the experimental play 69° South (2012), which dramatized the almost fatal voyage of Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton by having performers on stilts manipulate marionette puppets, the New York production of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Rape of Lucretia (2011), the African tour of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute (2011) for arts charity Opera for Change and the 2010 revival of Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts at Access Theatre in New York City. Hunter is also an actress. She has a number of film and TV credits to her name, including roles in Torchwood and Midsomer Murders. She also starred alongside David Tennant in the 2004 short film Traffic Warden. And, if Cumberbitches are not feeling deflated enough after knowing about this super talented woman, there’s more. Hunter can also sing–in French! She is a talented pianist and singer, and had a music career of her own, recording a French language album with Robbie Williams’s collaborator Guy Chambers in 2005 called The Isis Project. Where did they meet? Hunter met Cumberbatch on the set of Susan Luciani’s 2009 film Burlesque Fairytales, in which she played Annabel Blythe-Smith to Cumberbatch’s Henry Clark.