TORONTO -- Embattled free-speech warrior Julian Assange is dogged by a "kind of tabloid-gossip characterization" that actor Benedict Cumberbatch says he hopes to dispel with the WikiLeaks film "The Fifth Estate."

The "Sherlock" star says he worked hard to reveal "a more three-dimensional human portrait" of the platinum-blond provocateur, who resolutely disavowed the film in its earliest days and labelled it a massive "propaganda attack" on himself and his whistleblowing website.

Cumberbatch dismissed any talk of Assange's notorious personal oddities while promoting the film at the recent Toronto International Film Festival, telling journalists he really focused on examining how multifaceted the Australian could be.

"I wanted to escape two-dimensional pigeonholing him of either being a 'goodie' or a 'baddie,"' Cumberbatch said in September, munching on a banana between back-to-back interviews.

"And I wanted him to be a complex, rich individual who's performed a near-miraculous feat, and even evolving the way we think about media. That comes with a great deal of complications both personal and political so that's what at heart is constantly shifting -- because obviously this fear in the drama is personal and in private and political and public."

In approaching the role of Assange, Cumberbatch says he sought to interpret -- rather than impersonate -- the man. Although they briefly exchanged emails, Cumberbatch says Assange made it clear he wanted nothing to do with the film and refused to offer any counsel.

Cumberbatch turned to -- where else? -- the Internet to find video of Assange he could analyze, but while an "acreage" of footage revealed what the man was like at speaking events or in interviews, nothing revealed what he was like in private moments.

"The challenge I guess was to try and find what he'd be like once the door closes and camera turned off," Cumberbatch said of the highly intelligent figure -- considered a hero by some, a dangerous radical by others.

"The Fifth Estate" traces the early days of the WikiLeaks website, which provided whistleblowers with a way to anonymously reveal government secrets and corporate crimes.

Much of the film concerns Assange's relationship with early supporter Daniel Domscheit-Berg, played here by Daniel Bruhl. Their collaboration ended bitterly, with Domscheit-Berg claiming to have destroyed thousands of unpublished WikiLeaks submissions in the wake of their split.

Josh Singer's script is largely drawn from two books that Assange has dismissed: "Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website" by the disillusioned Domscheit-Berg, and "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy" by Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding.

Director Bill Condon says he's drawn to "the outsider nature of Assange," who is holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London trying to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex assault allegations, as well as possible extradition to the United States over a massive military leak.

"He has always felt, I think a step removed from the world and that's a position I understand and those are characters that I find myself drawn back to," says Condon, whose other films include "Dreamgirls" and "Kinsey."

The film examines the massive disclosure of military war logs and diplomatic cables that brought WikiLeaks its greatest notoriety, and on the flip side also depicts a frantic White House scramble to protect secret sources and undercover spies in the fallout.

Laura Linney, who plays a White House official under fire from that 2010 leak, says she saw her brief role as a key tool to present "the other end of the see-saw."

"That it's not as simple as exposing one thing, that there are people whose lives are in danger because of it, innocent people whose lives are in danger because of it," Linney says in a recent phone call from her home in Connecticut.

"And that there's just a lot that people don't know. People assume that they know everything and they don't. There's a lot that we don't know."

Condon says he was continually mindful of presenting a balanced look at the hot-button issues Assange raises.

"Every time there was a point of view you present the opposing one," Condon says of his strategy, adding that he decided during rehearsal to add a coda in which Assange -- as played by Cumberbatch -- directly addresses some of the criticisms that dog him.

"Someone put it well: It's Daniel's story but in many ways it's Julian's movie. And it felt that you sort of had to give Julian the last word."

"The Fifth Estate" opens Friday.