Chiwetel Ejiofor on ‘Doctor Strange’ and the mania of Benedict Cumberbatch’s fans

Perhaps it’s fitting that in director Billy Ray’s time-spanning thriller Secret in Their Eyes, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays a dogged FBI investigator pursuing one unsolved murder case for 13 years: After all, Ejiofor’s Hollywood career started 13 years ago, too, after his star-making role in 2002’s Dirty Pretty Things put him on every acclaimed auteur’s radar. Since then, Ejiofor has toplined a Best Picture winner with 12 Years a Slave, in addition to starring in movies both intimate and major, including this year’s major hit The Martian.We met up with Ejiofor recently in Los Angeles (where the actor was so well-rested and fresh-faced that you’d never know he just flew in from the South Asian set of Marvel’s new movie Doctor Strange), and asked him about his carefully considered career and the frenzy inspired by his friend Benedict Cumberbatch.