Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch (born 19 July 1976) is an English film, television, and theatre actor. His most acclaimed roles include Stephen Hawking in the BBC drama Hawking (2004); William Pitt in the historical film Amazing Grace (2006); the protagonist Stephen Ezard in the miniseries thriller The Last Enemy (2008); Paul Marshall in Atonement (2007); Bernard in Small Island (2009); and Sherlock Holmes in the modern BBC adaptation series Sherlock (2010). In February 2011, he began playing, on alternate nights, both Victor Frankenstein and his creature, opposite Jonny Lee Miller, in Danny Boyle's stage adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein at the National Theatre for a three-month run; later this year, he played Major Stewart in Steven Spielberg's War Horse (2011), which received five BAFTA nominations and six Academy Awards nominations including the Best Picture nomination in 2012; he also played Peter Guillam, one of the pivotal roles in Tomas Alfredson's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011), which won three Academy Awards nominations and eleven BAFTA nominations, including the Best Picture nomination in 2012 as well. He reprises the titular role Sherlock Holmes in the second series of the BBC's Sherlock, which aired in the United Kingdom in January 2012 and will broadcast on PBS in the United States in May 2012. In addition to the BBC's Sherlock, he stars as Christopher Tietjens in the BBC/HBO co-production television miniseries Parade's End, which is expected for release in 2012. He will portray Smaug the Dragon through motion capture and voice the Necromancer in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: There and Back Again, which will release in December 2013.