The most outrageous stories Benedict Cumberbatch has shared about making 'The Power of the Dog'

Cumberbatch stayed in character for the entire 12-week production for "The Power of The Dog." Cumberbatch told The Hollywood Reporter during a profile that Jane Campion, the film's director, asked him to remain in character for the entire shoot to perfect his depiction of his character, Phil Burbank.

In the film, Phil is a roughneck American ranch handler.

Cumberbatch said Campion even introduced him to the film's crew as Phil. "You'll meet Benedict at the end. Benedict's really nice. Phil is Phil," Cumberbatch recalled Campion saying.

While Cumberbatch admitted that he did return to being himself while with his family in the evenings when the day's filming was over, he revealed that he also spent periods of up to six days without washing, just as his character does in the film. He also exclusively listened to the music of Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood on his way to set. (Greenwood wrote the film's score.)

Cumberbatch told Esquire magazine that he gave himself nicotine poisoning three times during the production of "The Power of the Dog."

Part of Cumberbatch staying in character for the film's entire shoot included him regularly smoking cigarettes "perfectly rolled with one hand" like his character Phil Burbank, who is a chain-smoker.

"That was really hard," Cumberbatch said of smoking onset. "Filterless rollies, just take after take after take. I gave myself nicotine poisoning three times. When you have to smoke a lot, it genuinely is horrible."

Nicotine poisoning — which can be caused by excess exposure to products that hold nicotine such as cigarettes — can create a range of symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, and extreme fatigue, according to Healthline.

Cumberbatch said his toughest task on the "Power of The Dog" set was pretending to be a good banjo player like his character.

"[My character] is someone who has done it all their life, and I'm trying to master it in four weeks or something stupid. That's tough," Cumberbatch told the audience at a panel for the film at the TCL Chinese Theater alongside Campion and his costar Kirsten Dunst, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Cumberbatch previously told Esquire in a profile that he wanted to become "world-class at the banjo" while working on the film, but he hasn't made much progress.

"I'm very much not. I'm very far off," he said.

Before "The Power of the Dog," Cumberbatch had previously been tasked with playing the violin for his portrayal of a modern-day Sherlock Holmes in the BBC series "Sherlock."

The Guardian reported in 2012 that violinist Eos Chater coached Cumberbatch on how to play the instrument for the series, but Cumberbatch wasn't satisfied — even though Chater said in a blog post that he was an excellent student.

"You just hear all the fakery coming back at you," Cumberbatch told W Magazine of his experience playing the banjo. "I had it with 'Sherlock' when I was playing the violin."

During an interview on the Screen Actors Guild Awards red carpet in February, Cumberbatch said that he learned taxidermy for his role in "The Power of the Dog" despite the fact that the skill wasn't required of him in the script.

"The weirdest [skill], and the one that didn't get used in the film, obviously, was taxidermy," Cumberbatch told actor Laverne Cox for E! News on the red carpet. "That's a very strange thing to enter into if you've never done it before."

Cumberbatch said taxidermy — which is the art of preserving an animal's dead body through stuffing — was a skill that his character Phil had in the original novel by Thomas Savage that the film was based on. Even though it wasn't a part of the script, Cumberbatch said that he learned it in order to "authenticate" his version of the character.

"This man is incredibly skilled with his hands, he has a lot of time on his hands in 1925 Montana, so he whistles, he ropes, he braids, he makes gear for his horse, he's an ironmonger, he can do amazing things with dead animals that he shot as well," he said.

"There's so much of him that's so beyond my lived experience, I wanted to at least have an experience, a small taste of what it was like to do that kind of work," Cumberbatch added.

Cumberbatch told the Los Angeles Times that, due to his and Campion's choice to have him stay in character while filming "The Power of the Dog," he didn't truly meet the film's crew until they had closed the lid on production. His character Phil's coffin lid, to be exact, in a sequence that falls towards the end of the film.

"They opened the coffin and it was this weird celebration and fucked up commemoration all in one. I was so floored. Even now, I'm getting choked up talking about it," Cumberbatch told the Los Angeles Times. "And, of course, I immediately went into stuttering English actor mode, super self-conscious because everyone was just kind of staring at me like I had just dropped out of the back of an animal. 'Why are you staring?' 'Well, it's because we really haven't met you.'"

"That's how wonderful my immersion into Phil was," the actor continued. "They gave me the space to play this toxic but ultimately damaged and flawed human being."

Cumberbatch said in an appearance on the BBC's "Graham Norton Show" that he was able to put his skills from "The Power of the Dog" to use in real life, saving a family from a herd of cattle.

"I came back from shooting the film in August and we were off to the beach. 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," Cumberbatch said in the interview.

"I thought, 'I can do this,' and I just sort of parted the waves of cattle," he continued. "The family was like, 'That was incredible. Hey, aren't you Sherlock?' It was very un-Sherlock activity!"