Alan Cumming graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
Career
Gallery of Alan Cumming
1997
Alan Cumming on a talk show The View aired on ABC.
Gallery of Alan Cumming
1998
Alan Cumming in 1998, starring as the Emcee in the Broadway production of Cabaret.
Gallery of Alan Cumming
1999
Alan Cumming.
Gallery of Alan Cumming
2005
Alan Cumming starring in Sweet Land.
Gallery of Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming and Carrie Preston during a set of The Good Wife.
Gallery of Alan Cumming
Alan Cumming starring in The Good Wife.
Achievements
Membership
The Friends of the Birks Cinema
Cumming speaks for the Friends of the Birks Cinema, an organization that is working to restore the Birks Cinema in Aberfeldy, Scotland, where he was born.
Awards
Woodstock Warrior award
2018
Alan Cumming has received the Woodstock Warrior award for animal activism.
Outstanding Contribution to Film and Television award
2018
Cumming has received the Outstanding Contribution to Film and Television award from the Scottish branch of BAFTA.
aTVfest Icon award
2018
Alan at the sixth annual SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) aTVfest in Atlanta receiving the aTVfest Icon award.
Emmy
Cumming won an Emmy in 2017 for co-hosting, with George Oliphant, the NBC 1st Look show about Scotland.
Cumming speaks for the Friends of the Birks Cinema, an organization that is working to restore the Birks Cinema in Aberfeldy, Scotland, where he was born.
Tommy's Tale: A Novel of Sex, Confusion, and Happy Endings
(Tommy is twenty-nine, lives and loves in London, and has ...)
Tommy is twenty-nine, lives and loves in London, and has a morbid fear of the c word (commitment), the b word (boyfriend), and the f word (forgetting to call his drug dealer before the weekend). But when he begins to feel the urge to become a father, he starts to wonder if his chosen lifestyle can ever make him happy. Faced with the choice of maintaining his hedonistic, drugged-out, and admittedly fabulous existence or chucking it all in favor of a far more sensitive, fulfilling — and let's face it — sober lifestyle, Tommy finds himself in a true quandary.
(In his unique and engaging voice, the acclaimed actor of ...)
In his unique and engaging voice, the acclaimed actor of stage and screen shares the emotional story of his complicated relationship with his father and the deeply buried family secrets that shaped his life and career. A beloved star of stage, television, and film Alan Cumming is a successful artist whose diversity and fearlessness is unparalleled. His success masks a painful childhood growing up under the heavy rule of an emotionally and physically abusive father — a relationship that tormented him long into adulthood.
(Two carefree party girls try to reinvent themselves to im...)
Two carefree party girls try to reinvent themselves to impress their old classmates. But a bitter former acquaintance blows their cover, which leads the girls to letting loose with a surprise of their own!
Alan Cumming is an award-winning Scottish-American actor. He is known for starring in Prague, GoldenEye, the trilogy Spy Kids, and X2. On stage he appeared in Cabaret, Design for Living, The Threepenny Opera, and Macbeth.
Background
Alan Cumming was born on January 27, 1965 in Perthshire, Scotland to the family of a forester Alex Cumming and an insurance company secretary Mary Darling. He has an older brother. First, they lived in Dunkeld. Then, the family moved to Fassfern near Fort William, and, finally, in 1969 they came over to the east coast of Scotland. It was there that Alan grew up.
Education
Alan Cumming studied at Monikie Primary School and Carnoustie High School. During that period, he began appearing in plays, and soon after that began working with the Carnoustie Theatre Club and Carnoustie Musical Society.
Later, Cumming received a Bachelor's degree at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
Alan Cumming started to work already after graduation from high school in 1981 since he was too young to enter university. His first working place was D.C. Thomson Publishers. Cumming was appointed to the position of a sub-editor, became responsible for the launch of a new magazine Tops, and was the "Young Alan" who answered readers' letters.
Studying at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Alan made theater and film debuts in Macbeth at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow and in Passing Glory. After 1985, the year of the graduation, Cumming went on working in Scottish theater and television. However, as soon as the play Conquest of the South Pole transferred from Edinburgh to the Royal Court, Cumming moved to London. Living there, he worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and then the Royal National Theatre.
Alan swept the international theater world with his performance as The Emcee in a 1990s revival of Cabaret having built his foundation as both a cult comedy act and a Shakespearean player throughout the United Kingdom.
In 1992 Alan started his professional film career starring in Ian Sellar's Prague. The film went on to win him Best Actor award at the Atlantic Film Festival and a Scottish BAFTA Best Actor nomination. In the same year he made two films for the BBC – Screen Two: The Last Romantics and Bernard and the Genie. Among other famous movies, where Cumming has starred, there is Emma, GoldenEye, the Spy Kids trilogy, and X2: X-Men United. He also appears on The Good Wife.
In 2002 Cumming published his debut novel Tommy’s Tale about a thirty-year-old British bisexual with serious drug addictions who wants to settle down and have a child. Later, he released an autobiography, Not My Father's Son: A Memoir.
Besides, having met during the production of Cabaret, Cumming and actress Jennifer Jason Leigh collaborated as writers and co-directors on The Anniversary’ Party, a film about a Hollywood family. He has also produced the documentary Show People and the films Sweet Land and Full Grown Men.
Alan Cumming co-owns a queer cabaret bar, Club Cumming, in the East Village in New York, and has his own range of fragrances.
During the latest election, Cumming supported Joe Biden for president, though, he had his reservations. "He’s too old. I think Trump’s too old. But we seem to still be in this culture where old white men seem to be allowed to do anything."
Views
Alan Cumming is known as a committed activist. He promotes the idea that LGBT community should have accurate and inclusive representation in the media and equal rights. He defends animals. Besides, Cumming is a prominent celebrity supporter of Scottish independence.
Quotations:
"Kids are more genuine. When they come up and want to talk to you, they don't have an agenda. It's more endearing and less piercing to your aura."
"I think directing in a team is a really good idea because it stops the cult of the director as God straight away, and also you're discussing things on set so it opens it out to everyone and it becomes a totally collaborative thing. And you have someone who supports you when you're feeling a bit insecure."
"My feeling about work is it's much more about the experience of doing it than the end product. Sometimes things that are really great and make lots of money are miserable to make, and vice versa."
"I think the news media has to look at what really their job is as a reporter or a journalist in the news media. It is to challenge falsehoods. And to take people to task and to make sure the viewers are getting an unbiased and honest and accurate account of what is happening. Now that, obviously, did not happen in the U.S. election and obviously did not happen in the Brexit campaign. So I think it is a time for the news media to completely reassess how they communicate the news and how the whole system is set up."
"I’m not going to close myself off to the possibility of experience just because society says we must stick within these rigid boundaries."
Membership
The Royal Society of Edinburgh
,
Scotland
Planned Parenthood Federation of America
,
United States
The Friends of the Birks Cinema
,
Scotland
The RSAMD American Foundation
,
United States
The Family Equality Council
,
United States
Personality
Alan Cumming has great wit, charisma and energy. Time Magazine called him one of the three most fun people in show business. The New York Times described him as a bawdy counter-cultural sprite. The Guardian called him European, weird and sexually ambiguous.
In one of the interviews with Cumming, it is noted that he has one of the most eclectic CVs in Hollywood: he is prolific, versatile and prone to reinvention.
Quotes from others about the person
Jamie Painter Young: "As for his acting, what makes Cumming so exciting to watch is that you can never predict what he’s going to do next, or how he’s going to play a part. It’s more than his ability to be a chameleon. Cumming finds an offbeat way to connect his characters, so that his acting is intense, alive, and a little bit dangerous."
Val McDermid, The Royal Society of Edinburgh: "His range is remarkable – as a highly respected actor, director, producer, singer, voice artist, interviewer and writer, his career is both inspirational and aspirational for the young people he supports. His work in support of the LGBTQI community has also been of real significance and his own journey is one that provides hope and stokes ambition in young people in difficult situations. He’s a wonderful communicator who engages directly with a broad spectrum of audiences, talking passionately and thoughtfully about his beliefs and experiences."
Interests
Writing
Connections
In 1985 Alan Cumming got married to an actress Hilary Lyon. They separated in 1993. On January 7, 2007 Cumming registered his civil partnership with Grant Shaffer at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, London.