The Imitation Game is a Brit film stuffed with Brit talent, and as it turns out it's a small world when it comes to British cinema, as Benedict Cumberbatch is friends with pretty much all of his co-stars!
The film brings to the big screen the incredible real life story of Alan Turing, a maths genius recruited from university to head up a team at Britain's top secret code breaking centre Bletchley Park. Their mission? To crack the elusive German Enigma code that would lead to victory in World War Two.
Benedict stars as Turing in the film, a performance which is already generating Oscar buzz, but he's joined by a long list of talented stars from our shores including Allen Leech and Matthew Beard who EntertainmentWise caught up with recently to talk about the film.
Downton favourite Allen has swapped life at the Abbey for life in Hut 8 for The Imitation Game, joining Benedict's character Turing at the Bletchley home for the team of code breakers. As he told us the group immediately bonded: "We were privileged enough to have two weeks of rehearsals before it started, and it really helped to gel us all together as an ensemble," says the actor with his co-star Matthew pointing out that "the real members of Hut 8 were very close because they spent all of their days and nights together and under incredibly stressful circumstances and in a strange way that can be what a film set can be like when you're working 16 hour days and the clock is ticking. So we united in a similar way."
Keira Knightley, Matthew Beard, Matthew Goode, Allen Leech and Benedict Cumberbatch in The Imitation Game
Not that the cast needed too much team-building as as the film's other big name Keira Knightley told us they all had one thing in common - Benedict! "I only realised afterwards that actually most of them are all of Ben's mates, so he just got all of his friends in!" the actress, who has known Ben since they starred in Atonement together back in 2007, explained.
With all the Oscar buzz surrounding the film, expect the tight-knit cast to team up for the awards season campaign in the coming months, and hopefully bring the film and Benedict some Academy Award glory. Keira is already Ben's number one cheerleader for the Oscar race but his friend of 14 years and other Imitation Game co-star Matthew Goode is also backing him all the way, writing for GQ recently that "I don't want to sound like I'm kissing his a**e, but it's award-worthy in my mind. He can do the lot - it's really depressing!"
The Imitation Game is in UK cinemas now. Watch our interview with Matthew and Allen below.
