Benedict Cumberbatch explains how a near-death experience changed his outlook on life

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The actor who has played a superhero on screen has had his share of intense scenes, but little is known about a real-life dangerous episode from his past that put his life in jeopardy.

Doctor Strange star revealed this week that in 2004, while filming the BBC series "To the Ends of the Earth" in South Africa, he was robbed and held captive by six men after his group got a flat tire on the side of the road. Cumberbatch and his friends were eventually tied up and forced to sit in a menacing position before the perpetrators escaped.

It gave me a sense of the passage of time, but not a positive one," Cumberbatch said of the experience. "It made me feel eager to live an unordinary life, and I'm still dealing with that eagerness.

He also explained that the scary encounter had motivated him to try more intense activities to get his adrenaline pumping.

The near-death experiences really fueled all that," he said. "It made me think, 'You know what, I could die at any moment.' I was literally throwing myself out of planes and taking a ton of unnecessary risks.

Now that I've got a family, it puts things in perspective. At the time, I was the only one counting on me, apart from my parents. But now that I've got a wife and three kids, it changes everything. When I was younger, I used to think about what could go wrong, but having a family's made me accept that it could all be taken away in an instant. And that's okay.

Mentioning some of his past traumatic experiences in an indirect way.

There's an approach to laughter, but it's a misconception to think you can force it. That's a dead end," he said of the Holland system, which involves inhaling through the diaphragm while controlling the muscles used for laughing. "You have to really focus your mind in the moment, so you can respond to what's happening. And that can mean drawing on your own life experiences or simply using your imagination.

When you're really young, it's tougher. I'm 48 years old now, so I've already lived for a while," Cumberbatch said. "I've gone through loss, I've felt pain, I've had to deal with some of the really terrible things in life, as well as the greatest joys.

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