British actor Benedict Cumberbatch, tipped for an Oscar for his performance as mathematician Alan Turing, says he hopes the film will be a worthy tribute to the wartime codebreaker persecuted for being gay.

The Sherlock Holmes star spoke on Wednesday at the European premiere of The Imitation Game, one of several biographical films to dominate the program of the 58th London Film Festival.

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Turing was a computer scientist ahead of his time and the film coincides with the 60th anniversary of his death.

He was prosecuted for homosexuality in 1952, when it was a crime in Britain, despite the fact that he had played a crucial role in deciphering German codes that experts say accelerated the fall of Adolf Hitler.

Forced to undergo chemical castration, Turing killed himself in 1954 at the age of 41 and was officially pardoned only last year by Queen Elizabeth II.

“I really want his story to be known as broadly as possible,” Cumberbatch said at the screening.

“I hope it will be a launching point for more interest and understanding and a proper celebration for Alan Turing.”

Cumberbatch shrugged off talk that he could land the Oscar for best actor in the film, which won the people’s choice award at the Toronto Film Festival and also stars British actress Keira Knightley.

Knightley plays code-breaker Joan Clarke at the Bletchley Park decryption centre, where the German ‘Enigma’ code was cracked, shortening the war by two years and saving 14 million lives, according to the film.

The Pirates of the Caribbean star said that women still struggle with the same issues as Clarke, hired because she could crack codes faster than Turing, but who struggled to be taken seriously.

“What she was fighting for was a place at the table and equal pay and I think that those are still the two main things that feminists today are fighting for, and there’s still inequality,” Knightley said.

Norwegian director Morten Tyldum said he felt the story resonated with his life.

“I just moved to Hollywood and I was an outsider in Hollywood,” Tyldum said.

“To me this is a movie about outsiders, about those who are different, who think outside the norm. There was something about that story that really struck me.”