He's cracked it! First look at Benedict Cumberbatch as World War II codebreaker Alan Turing in The Imitation Game
PUBLISHED: 18:55, 27 December 2013 | UPDATED: 20:59, 27 December 2013
He plays the role of World War II codebreaker Alan Turing, who was ‘convicted of gross indecency after engaging in homosexual relations’.
And as the mathematician receives a posthumous royal pardon, a film still has been released of Benedict Cumberbatch in his new role as the wartime codebreaker in The Imitation Game.
The film’s official Twitter account posted a photo of the actor poised next to an electromechanical Bombe machine, which Turing created to help break German Enigma codes.
First look: A movie still has been released from The Imitation Game, in which Benedict Cumberbatch plays mathematician Alan Turing, a German Enigma codebreaker in World War II
The 37-year-old actor also looked the part, wearing a smart pin-striped shirt, trouser braces and a polka-dot bow tie, with his hair neatly parted.
The photo was posed on Christmas Eve, the same day as the Queen officially pardoned Alan Turing over sixty years after he was convicted of homosexuality , which was illegal in the UK until 1967.
‘In honor of today's Royal Pardon, please find the first still released from the upcoming film, The Imitation Game,’ the tweet reads.
Timely: The film still was released on Twitter on the same day as Alan Turing was given a royal pardon for his conviction for homosexuality
Following his guilty plea and an admission of a sexual relationship with 19-year-old Arnold Murray in 1952, Turing was given the choice of imprisonment or hormone treatment to eradicate his sexual urges.
The mathematician and cryptanalyst was found dead by his cleaner in 1954, two-years after he opted for the latter, with a post-mortem examination revealing the cause of death to be cyanide poisoning.
The Imitation Game follows the English mathematician and logician as he helps to crack the Enigma code, with Kiera Knightly starring as fellow cryptanalyst Joan Clarke, with whom he had a short-lived engagement.
Co-stars: The Imitation Game stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing and Keira Knightley as Joan Clarke
Billed as a nail-biting race against time during the darkest days of the Second World War, the film is based on Andrew Hodges’ biography, Alan Turing: The Enigma.
It also stars Matthew Goode, Allen Leech, Keira Knightley, Mark Strong, Charles Dance, Rory Kinnear and Matthew Beard.
Its arrival follows a lengthy pre-production during which the Graham Moore penned screenplay was rated best unproduced script in Hollywood by Black List in 2011.
The movie is filmed in various locations across England, amongst them Bletchley Park, where Turing worked throughout the war, Buckinghamshire town Chesham and Bicester Airfield in Oxfordshire.
Turing's life has previously been documented in TV show Britain's Greatest Codebreaker, with Ed Stoppard taking the lead role.
No release date has been set, but it is expected that The Imitation Game will come out in late 2014.