Famous for playing Sherlock, Doctor Strange and men who can always find solutions, Benedict Cumberbatch is immersed in a loss that he can’t remedy in his latest film, The Thing with Feathers.

“I feel that it's important ... to bring the subject of male grief into the culture and examine what happens when matriarchy is absent,” the British actor, 49, tells Yahoo of the film, which is out now. “What that journey is, how we do or don't best deal with it and what the outcome can be.”

Cumberbatch plays Dad, a graphic novelist whose wife dies suddenly. He’s trying to usher their two young sons through the turmoil, but he can barely stay afloat. He wrestles with the darkness as a chilling presence — a crow born from his own illustrations — haunts him in their home.

Part of what drew Cumberbatch to the role — in addition to being a fan of Max Porter’s novella, Grief Is the Thing with Feathers, which director Dylan Southern adapted for the film — is that the exploration of male grief isn’t something he feels is depicted enough onscreen. For generations, men have long been encouraged to be stoic and to mask their feelings.

“I think it’s very damaging,” he says. “It’s proven in a lot of our popular culture at the moment. The zeitgeist of masculinity is to ‘man up,’ to not show [emotion], to contain, control and suppress … which is very damaging in the long run.”

The subject matter didn’t make for easy days on set, which was filmed largely inside a South London flat. Though he and the crew tried to keep things light with “a lot of gallows humor … as well as reverence for the work and subject matter.”

It helped that Cumberbatch had two costars, brothers Richard and Henry Boxall, who played his sons and brought much-needed levity to the set. “They were like lightning in a jar — guileless beginners,” Cumberbatch says of the siblings. “They'd never acted before being on set. It was all utterly new to them, and there's magic to that.”

He worked to foster a lighter atmosphere amid the heavy subject matter, reminding the child stars that what they were doing was playing. In downtime, they’d do just that — kicking a soccer ball in the hall, telling jokes and doing puzzles. He also gifted the kids a Ninjago Lego set, which they were “obsessed” with.

“Out of that, games would ensue — and sometimes coercive ones,” Cumberbatch says. “One day, they really didn't want to put on their mom's clothes and lipstick [for a] scene, where I come across them and shout. To get that moment, Dylan sacrificed his pride by saying, ‘All right, I'll do something for you [in] exchange.’ They wrote ‘poo’ on his forehead in lipstick. They said, ‘You can't wipe that off. You have to keep it on your head all day.’ They also called him ‘weak man’ in front of the crew. It was incredible.”

That was the lighter side. Cumberbatch said he had to work to shed the emotional weight of the day when the cameras stopped. He puts the character of Dad up there with Patrick Melrose and Phil Burbank (The Power of the Dog) as one of the three most challenging roles he’s ever played.

“Normally, I do some quite deep work to get into character,” he says. “On this one, it was more about looking after myself when I wasn't doing the work because it was pretty draining.”

It meant taking off his costume at the end of the day, having a cup of tea, getting in the car and listening to music on the way home. By the time he walked in the door of his own home — with wife Sophie Hunter and their three sons, Christopher, Hal and Finn — he’d be ready to “plug back into the world outside of this imaginary cocoon.”

Whether he’s playing a superhero or acting in films that have won him Academy Award nominations (The Imitation Game, The Power of the Dog), Cumberbatch says “originality is a key thing I look for” in roles today.

“Look, I'm of an age where I can't help repeating myself sometimes,” Cumberbatch says. “For me, it's more about who I'm working with [and] the vision of the director and the writer. If I think I'm going to have a stretch [artistically] and it's going to be fun — and it helps as well if it's near home and … can accommodate my family — then those are all the elements.”

At 49, “I'm trying to ... be a little bit more selective,” he says.

As the year winds down, he’s looking forward to some downtime. Yahoo Lists asked Cumberbatch for his top 3(ish) holiday movies. While the actor, who voiced the title character in 2018’s The Grinch, is “not that keen on suiting the film to the time of year, if I'm completely honest” — here are his picks.

Elf

“I freaking love Elf,” he says. “Can't get enough. That always does it for me. Then I get a bit lost in Will Ferrell's genius moments. I go back into Anchorman and just anything that makes me laugh.”

It's a Wonderful Life

“I went to see It's A Wonderful Life on the big screen a few years ago and oh my goodness, to see Jimmy Stewart up close in that … magnification was just mind-blowing. It’s an astonishing performance of naturalistic brilliance, despite its rich themes and its uplifting ending. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful piece of work. Just as an actor, to marvel in his brilliance was exceptional.”

Nominated films

“For me, Christmas often becomes about seeing quite a lot of the year's greatest work in order to be able to vote for BAFTA and Oscars,” he says. “So I'm just kind of awash with fantastic cultural experiences, rather than ‘I must see Home Alone 2.’”