Benedict Cumberbatch used his The Power Of The Dog ranching skills to save a family from a cattle herd
Turns out all that method acting in the Oscar-nominated film paid off big time
In preparation for his role as Phillip Burbank in Jane Campion’s The Power Of The Dog, Benedict Cumberbatch learned how to do everything his character knows how to do—from playing the banjo to whittling and making rope. Before the film’s shooting began in New Zealand, the actor also attended an intense ranch training in Montana, where he learned all about life out in the wilderness. While this helped him in his bone-chilling performance as Burbank, it also apparently came in handy when he needed to help a family out of a bovine situation.
“I came back from shooting the film in August, and we were off to the beach,” Cumberbatch says in an interview on the Graham Norton Show, per Insider. “To get there we had to cross a field, and in the field was a petrified family who just couldn’t move. They were frozen because of a herd of cows with calves.”