Cumberbatch breaks out of ‘class-type’ as a bare-knuckle Romany Gipsy

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH has landed a film role as a Romany bareknuckle fighter after previously claiming he was unable to escape “class-typing”.

The Oscar nominee has been cast in Gypsy Boy, the film adaptation of Mikey Walsh’s bestselling memoirs. The autobiography Gypsy Boy and its sequel Gypsy Boy: On The Run chronicled Walsh’s experiences growing up and, knowing that he was gay, running away from a Romany community of champion bare-knuckle fighters in England in the 1980s and 1990s.

Cumberbatch, 41, will play Mikey’s father, Frank, who places a pair of golden gloves on a chain around his son’s neck when he is born, in the hope that he will maintain the family’s fighting reputation.

He said the character was “unlike any I’ve played before”.

“I was immediately drawn to Mikey’s courageous and heartbreaking story,” he said. “He [Frank] is a complex man torn between tradition and his love for a son struggling to come to terms with an identity that’s completely at odds with Frank and his culture. It’s a tension that threatens to tear everyone in their family and that community apart.”

It comes after Cumberbatch, who was educated at Harrow, said he was typecast due to his background.

In an interview in 2011 with the Radio Times, he said: “Being a posh actor in England you cannot escape the class-typing from whatever side you look at it.

“I realised from quite early on that, although I wasn’t trying to make a class speciality of it, I was playing slightly asexual, sociopathic intellectuals.”

Casting is currently under way to find a young actor to play Mikey when director Morgan Matthews begins filming next summer.