Alan Cumming

Alan Cumming, OBE (born 27 January 1965) is often a Scottish stage, television and film actor, writer, director, producer and author. His roles have incorporated the Emcee in Cabaret, Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler in X2: X-Men United, and Fegan Floop inside the Spy Kids trilogy. He has also appeared in independent films such as the Anniversary Party, which he co-wrote, co-directed and co-starred in; and Ali Selim’s Sweet Land, for which he won an Independent Spirit award as producer. His London stage appearances include Hamlet, Madman in Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of an Anarchist, for which he received an Olivier award, the lead in Martin Sherman’s Bent, and as Dionysus in the National Theatre of Scotland’s The Bacchae. On Broadway he has appeared as Mac the Knife within the Threepenny Opera, the Emcee in Cabaret, for which he won the Tony in 1998, and “Design for Living”. Cumming also introduces “Masterpiece Mystery” for PBS. He has also composed a novel, Tommy’s Tale, had a cable talk display (“Eavesdropping with Alan Cumming”) and produced a line of perfumed items labeled “Cumming”. He has contributed opinion pieces to quite a few publications and performed a cabaret show I Bought A Blue Car Nowadays. Retaining his British citizenship, Cumming also became a U.S. citizen in November 2008

Early life

Cumming was born in Aberfeldy, in Perthshire, Scotland, the son of Mary Darling, an insurance company secretary, and Alex Cumming, a forester. He has stated that his father was physically and emotionally abusive towards him.He has one older brother, Tom, and a niece. He is bisexual, and has been married to a woman and subsequently to a man. Brought up in Angus, Cumming attended Monikie Primary School and Carnoustie High School and originally aspired to a career in veterinary medicine, but a personality clash with his biology teacher prevented him from taking a related elective and he subsequently set his sights on becoming an actor.Following graduation, he spent a year and a half employed as an editor and columnist for the Scottish pop magazine TOPS before entering the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. On graduation from Drama school he married fellow student Hilary Lyon; they divorced 8 years later and had no children.

Film

Cumming played Sean Walsh, an unwanted suitor of Minnie Driver’s character, in Circle of Close friends, an Irish film released in 1995.
In 1995 he performed Boris Ivanovich Grishenko inside James Bond movie GoldenEye.
Cumming co-wrote, co-directed, co-produced, and co-starred inside ensemble movie The Anniversary Party with friend and former Cabaret co-star Jennifer Jason Leigh, in 2001.The two starred inside movie as a Hollywood couple.
Cumming starred in and directed Suffering Man’s Charity, later released as Ghost Writer. He had prominent roles inside Spy Children trilogy, X-Men 2 (as Nightcrawler), and was in Spice Globe, as well as Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Josie and also the Pussycats and Son of the Mask, together with acting from the Flintstones movie Viva Rock Vegas. He performed Saturninus in the 1999 Julie Taymor film production of Titus
Cumming played a psychotic ex-amusement park employee in David Munro’s Total Grown Men, which was shown in theaters all through the U.S. in summer time 2008.
In Gray Matters, a 2007 romantic comedy film directed by Sue Kramer, Cumming plays cab driver Gordy who had a crush on Gray (Heather Graham). It premiered on October ǵ, 2006 in the Hamptons International Movie Festival and had a U.S. theatrical release on February 23, 20ǧ.
In 2010, Cumming will provide the voice of Adolf Hitler from the movie Jackboots on Whitehall at the same time as co-star in “Boogie Woogie”.
Throughout his career, Cumming has also directed two short films, Butter and Burn Your Mobile phone. The latter started its life like a one-off drama on BBC Radio 4.

Tv

Within the mid-1980s Cumming made brief appearances in Scottish television shows including Take The Higher Road and Taggart. His first major television part was inside Christmas 1991 comedy Bernard plus the Genie, a Richard Curtis-scripted one-off show where he starred alongside Lenny Henry and Rowan Atkinson.
Cumming starred as Sebastian Flight in the Scottish sitcom The Higher Life in 1994-5. The series was written by Cumming and co-star Forbes Masson, continuing an acting-writing partnership the two had developed since their drama school days. Masson and Cumming also formed a cult Kelvinside musical double act “Victor and Barry”, which was filmed for an stv present and were nominated for a Perrier Award inside the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 1988, toured Australia in 1989, playing the Sydney Opera House, released a record (“See Victor and Barry and Faint”) but were killed off onstage at the London Palladium within the early 1990s.
In 2001, he guest starred inside the HBO comedy Sex as well as the City as O the designer from the episode, ‘The Real Me’. 2003 saw him playing a cameo part inside American sitcom Frasier, playing Niles’s yoga instructor. He also guest starred on “3rd Rock from the Sun”.
In 2004, he starred in Showtime’s Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical by which he played the function with the Lecturer – a versatile character who narrates the story and transforms himself into numerous other minor characters. Shortly afterwards, he had a short role in Richard Bell’s feature film Eighteen. He appeared in BBC present, Shoebox Zoo as the humble, kind-hearted Bruno.
Cumming played the part of Bill Blaikie, a gay drag queen party promoter hired by Kit Porter to manage her café cum nightclub, in season 3 with the L Word, having an affair with Moira/Max, a transgendered character. He appeared in episodes 2 to 7, which originally aired on Showtime in 2006.
In 2007, Cumming played Glitch/Ambrose, an inventor whose brain had been partially removed, within the TV miniseries, Tin Man. He also provided the voice of Chuck Masters, a 50 year-old, paralyzed, HIV-positive gay man in Logo’s Rick and Steve, a stop animation sitcom created by Q. Allan Brocka.
He is also the host of the 2008-20Ǫ seasons with the PBS Masterpiece ‘Mystery’ series.
Cumming also appeared as the third celebrity hijacker in Huge Brother: Celebrity Hijack, giving the housemates a technique acting task where they had to stay in character all day and then produce an improvised play.
In 2010 he plays Eli Gold on the CBS television show The Excellent Wife, a character who will turn out to be a series regular from the show’s 2010-2011 season, and Desrae, a transvestite, on the British series “The Runaway”.
Cumming also hosted short-lived US cable tv shows, “Eavesdropping with Alan Cumming,” in which he interviewed female co-stars of his movie roles, and “Midnight Snack,” in which he and his dogs introduced cult movies.
Cumming has also appeared on numerous US, UK and Australian talk shows.

Theatre

Cumming played the Emcee in the 1998 Broadway revival of Cabaret, for which he won a Tony and NY Drama Critics award.He had previously played the role in a production at London’s Donmar Warehouse theatre, for which he had been nominated for an Olivier Award.He recorded the song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with Liza Minnelli for the Broadway Cares: Home for the Holidays album in 2001.
Other stage roles have included Otto inside the 2001 Broadway creation of Design for Living by Noel Coward, Valere in David Hirson’s La Bete, the title function inside 1993 English Touring Theatre’s Hamlet (playing opposite his then-wife, Hilary Lyon, in the part of Ophelia), and the Madman from the 1990 Royal National Theatre creation of Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo, for which he won an Olivier Award.
In 2002, Cumming and then-boyfriend British director Nick Philippou formed the manufacturing corporation The Art Party. The company’s primary and only play was the primary English creation of Jean Genet’s play Elle, which Cumming had adapted from a literal translation by Terri Gordon. The company folded in 2003.
In 2006, Cumming returned for the stage, firstly performing in a poorly-received revival with the Bertolt Brecht-Kurt Weill musical The Threepenny Opera opposite Cyndi Lauper. They later performed in the Tony Awards. In late 2006, he appeared from the West End playing the lead part in Bent, a play about homosexuals in Germany under the Nazis. In 2007 he took the lead function inside National Theatre of Scotland’s manufacturing with the Bacchae, which premiéred in the Edinburgh Festival in August, transferring for the Lyric Theatre in London and then to Lincoln Center, New York.
Cumming performed alongside Dianne Wiest in Classic Stage Company’s manufacturing of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, directed by Viacheslav Dolgachev.
He was optioned to play the Green Goblin inside new musical Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark which has an uncertain start date in the Hilton Theatre on Broadway; after negotiating a short extension in the alternative he then withdrew from the manufacturing at its lapse.

Personal life

Cumming holding a producer credit for that 1 Second Film in May possibly 2006
Cumming lives in New York City with his husband (via UK civil union), graphic artist Grant Shaffer, and their dogs, Honey and Leon.The couple dated for two years before entering into a civil partnership at the Old Royal Naval College Greenwich on January 7, 2007.[16] After his civil union, when asked if he was monogamous, he stated “I don’t believe that monogamy is feasable”.
Once described as “a frolicky pansexual sex symbol for that new millennium”, Cumming has stated that he considers himself bisexual, “although the pendulum has obviously swung”.Prior to the civil union, Cumming dated both men and women. Previous relationships include a two year relationship with actress Saffron Burrows, a six year relationship with theater director Nick Philippou, and a 1985 marriage to actress Hilary Lyon which lasted eight years.
In a profile for that Times, Cumming stated that he “would dearly like to adopt a child” but subsequently stated his life was “too hectic” for kids.When he outed himself as bisexual in 1998, Cumming promoted LGBT rights, emceeing and attending fundraisers for organizations for instance the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), as well as several AIDS charities, including the American Foundation for AIDS Research (AMFAR) and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
Cumming is a patron of Scottish Youth Theatre, Scotland’s National Theatre ‘for and by’ young people. He is also a patron of NORM-UK, an English-registered charity against circumcision; he has revealed that he is uncircumcised.⎠][21]
In March 2005, Cumming received the Vito Russo Award at the 16th Annual GLAAD Media Awards for outstanding contributions toward eliminating homophobia.In July of the same year he was also presented with the HRC’s Humanitarian Award in San Francisco, also for his LGBT public stance.
In November 2006, Cumming received a Doctor of Arts honorary degree from the University of Abertay Dundee.
Cumming was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to film, theatre and the arts and activism for LGBT rights.
On November 7, 2008, Cumming became a dual-national and was sworn in as a citizen of the United States of America at a ceremony in New York City.

Filmography

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1᚛	Shadow of the Stone	Tom Henderson	TV Series
1991	Bernard and the Genie	Bernard Bottle	TV Movie British Comedy Award for Best TV Comedy Newcomer
1992	Prague	Alexander Novak
1993	Micky Love	Greg Deane	TV Movie
	Mr. Bean	Bachelor #2	Uncredited TV Series
썊	Second Best	Bernard
	Black Beauty	Black Beauty	Voice
1995	Circle of Friends	Sean Walsh
	GoldenEye	Boris Ivanovich Grishenko
	The High Life	Sebastian Flight	TV Series
1996	Emma	Mr. Elton
	3rd Rock From The Sun	Season 5, Episode 18 Dick and Harry Fall Into a Hole	as Angus “The Hole” McDuff- Hole expert
1997	Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion	Sandy Frink
	Spice World	Piers Cuthbertson-Smyth
	Buddy	Dick Croner, Trudy’s Assistant
1999	Titus	Saturninus
	Plunkett & Macleane	Lord Rochester
	Eyes Wide Shut	Hotel Desk Clerk
	Annie	Rooster
2000	Urbania	Brett
	God, the Devil and Bob	The Devil	TV Series
	The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas	Mick Jagged/Gazoo
	Get Carter	Jeremy Kinnear
2001	The Anniversary Party	Joe Therrian	Writer/Producer/Director Nominated — Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature shared with Jennifer Jason Leigh Nominated — Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay shared with Jennifer Jason Leigh
	Sex and the City	O	TV Series
	Investigating Sex	Sevy
	Josie and the Pussycats	Wyatt Frame
	Spy Kids	Fegan Floop
	Company Man	General Batista
2002	Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams	Fegan Floop
	Nicholas Nickleby	Mr. Folair	National Board of Review Award for Best Cast
	Foyle’s War	host (himself)	TV series
2003	X2	Kurt Wagner / Nightcrawler
	Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over	Fegan Floop
2004	Shoebox Zoo	Bruno the Bear	TV Series
	Garfield: The Movie	Persnikitty	Voice
	Eighteen	Father Chris
2005	Son of the Mask	Loki	Nominated - Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Supporting Actor
	Reefer Madness	Lecturer/Goat-Man/FDR
	Ripley Under Ground	Jeff Constant
	Neverwas	Jake
	Sweet Land	Frandsen	Producer Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature
2006	The L Word	Billie Blaikie	TV Series
	Full Grown Men	The Hitchhiker	Co-Producer
2007	Gray Matters	Gordy
	Suffering Man’s Charity (aka Ghost Writer)	John Vandermark	Executive Producer
	Tin Man	Glitch	TV miniseries
2009	Boogie Woogie	Dewey
	Dare	Grant Matson
	PoliWood	Himself	Documentary
2010	The Tempest	Sebastian
	Jackboots on Whitehall	Adolf Hitler	Voice
	The Good Wife	Eli Gold	TV Series
	Riverworld	Judas Caretaker

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