Is Benedict Cumberbatch Engaged?

We think our hearts just stopped.

Benedict Cumberbatch is engaged and we don’t know where one buys funeral veils at this hour of the morning.

The 38-year-old English actor has been a sex symbol ever since his angular face appeared on screens in the BBC’s idiosyncratic?Sherlock reboot a few years ago. Although that Belstaff coat his character lived, and possibly fake-died in, might have played a part? He has even driven fans to mild criminal behaviour – British Airways noticed?an increase in ‘stolen’ copies of their inflight magazine when the?Star Trek actor featured on the cover earlier this year. Just last week?he got us hot under the collar with his speculation on what Sherlock would be like in bed. Alas! It looks like all our fantasies wil remain just that.

The Telegraph reports that an announcement in the Forthcoming Marriages section of?The Times – he did go to Harrow after all – seems to point towards the Imitation Game actor walking down the aisle with his secret girlfriend who?got the internet into quite a frenzy a couple of months ago.

The notice reads:

“Mr BT. Cumberbatch and Miss S.I. Hunter: The engagement is announced between Benedict, son of Wanda and Timothy Cumberbatch of London, and Sophie, daughter of Katharine Hunter of Edinburgh and Charles Hunter of London.”

Cue the tears and frantic googling.

And who is this Sophie Hunter AKA every thinking woman’s love rival? She’s a theatre director and actress and has starred opposite Benedict before, in Burlesque Fairytales, a 2009 thriller. Sophie is 36-years-old and has an undergraduate degree from Oxford in French and Italian. She studied acting in Paris in the acclaimed Jacques Lecoq school and seems as far from WAG that a Hollywood star can get.

The pair haven’t been dating long apparently – the only paparazzi photographs of the couple are from the French Open during the summer so don’t expect a wedding, or two, like Amal and George’s. The short relationship will also come as something of a shock to Benedict’s most devoted fans – after all the actor was in a decade-long relationship with fellow actress Olivia Poulet until 2010.

Follow Jeanne Sutton on Twitter @jeannedesutun