Despite being recently voted the world’s sexiest actor by film fans, Cumberbatch revealed even pop queen Madonna found him a bit odd when they met.

Explaining why he seems to be unlucky in love, the 37-year-old said: ‘It is harder [meeting women], because people think they know more about you than they actually do.

‘And you can’t control that… you can’t control perceptions of you.’

Recalling his run-in with the Madonna, 55, the Star Trek actor quipped: ‘She said, “You’re the one with the strange name”. I said, “Yes, I am, Madonna”.;

But he said he had little time for people who only see his oddities.

‘All the posh-baiting that goes on… it’s so predictable, so domestic, so dumb.

‘I’m an upper middle-class kid. I know that’s counted as posh, but then I know people who I would call posh, and I don’t talk like them,’ he told GQ magazine.

While he is best known for his lead role in BBC1’s Sherlock, which will return to our screens for a third series on January 1, Cumberbatch insisted he was no ‘one trick pony’.

‘I know that everything I do now will have flavours of “Sherlock”,’ he said.