Why Benedict Cumberbatch Won’t Join Social Media: ‘I Can’t Tweet to Save My Life’

While Benedict Cumberbatch‘s adoring fans would love nothing more than to see and/or interact with their beloved British actor on Twitter or Instagram, the Doctor Strange star says he’d be “a disaster” on social media.

“I can’t get involved in social media because as they know, it’d be a disaster. I can’t tweet to save my life,” Cumberbatch tells PEOPLE. “I’d go over my character limits and never make any sense. It would just consume me and I find that whole thing ultimately very toxic. I’d much rather spend my energy doing what brought me to their attention in the first place, which is my work.”

Speaking of his work, for which he’s won an Emmy and received an Oscar nomination, the Sherlock star says he often takes his work home with him, subconsciously. As in: It haunts his dreams and sometimes he’s not wearing clothes in them.

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“It’s usually, like a lot of actors, nightmares after the event, rather than during,” Cumberbatch says of frequently dreaming in character. “It’s the way that brains work — it’s incredible, isn’t it? But you just get haunted by a moment, and suddenly you’re back playing a character that you dropped months or years , and then you’re often onstage and often without a vital prop and sometimes without any clothes whatsoever and you can’t remember your lines. You’re looking at characters that are really familiar and the situation is half familiar, but suddenly you’re in a real room and the dream takes real odd turns, I don’t know.”

He continues: “It’s so funny in the way we get haunted by our work as actors, I know I’m not alone in that. The naked thing, or running out or just completely forgetting what you’re saying is very fiercely real.”