Actor says playing grieving parent ‘unpleasant’

New father Benedict Cumberbatch has said playing a parent who loses a child was “a very unpleasant place to go to”.

The Sherlock actor plays author Stephen Lewis in the BBC One adaptation of Ian Mcewan’s award-winning novel The Child In Time.

The book, which won Mcewan the prestigious Whitbread Novel Award in 1987, is centred around Lewis and his wife Julie – played by Kelly Macdonald – and their struggle following the loss of their child. He said: “When you’re dealing with something like the loss of a child it’s pretty distressing, I won’t lie. It was a very unpleasant place to go to.

“By circumstance it happened that my second boy had been born weeks before, but it’s not a prerequisite to doing this role to be a father. If you were a childless actor trying to imagine it you’d have to be made of stone not to feel the enormity of what that must be like. Playing with your own experience can be incredibly dangerousanywayasyouneed to be able to separate things very easily, otherwise things can get out of control and be very damaging.”