In light of his recent role as Alan Turing in "The Imitation Game," Benedict Cumberbatch has added his name to an open letter to the British government urging the British government to pardon thousands of gay men convicted of gross indecency.

According to The Guardian, other signatories include actor Stephen Fry, civil rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, The Imitation Game's director, Morten Tyldum, and Rachel Barnes, who is Alan Turing's niece.

For those who may not know much about Turing, he led efforts to crack the Nazi code, and was hailed by Winston Churchill as the person who "made the single biggest contribution to the allied victory in World War II."  However, Turing was later prosecuted for being gay in 1952 and was chemically castrated. He committed suicide in 1954, and was given a posthumous pardon in 2013.

The open letter reads, "The UK's homophobic laws made the lives of generations of gay and bisexual men intolerable. It is up to young leaders of today including the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to acknowledge this mark on our history and not allow it to stand...

We call upon Her Majesty's government to begin a discussion about the possibility of pardoning all the men, alive or deceased, who like Alan Turing were convicted. Alan Turing was not only prosecuted, but quite arguably persuaded to end his own life early, by a society who called him a criminal for simply seeking out the love he deserved, as all human beings do.

Sixty years later, that same government claimed to 'forgive' him by pardoning him. I find this deplorable, because Turing's actions did not warrant forgiveness - theirs did - and the 49,000 other prosecuted men deserve the same."

The Huffington Post reports that the letter has now been signed by 40,544 people.

According to The Independent, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge rejected the letter's plea to support the campaign yesterday, with a spokesperson stating that the subject is a matter for the government to handle.