Alan Cumming Quotes

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  Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge.

  Alan Cumming

  Topics in Challenge

  Tags in Performing

• You’ll see Dame Judi Dench in a Bond film, in Shakespeare and then starring in her own sitcom. You never see that here with Meryl Streep.

  Alan Cumming

• You do get really exhausted doing films. You work such long hours, and after a while, things can get out of perspective, just like if anyone’s tired, things get on top of them.

  Alan Cumming

• With ‘Urban Secrets,’ I just really liked the idea of wandering around chatting to people.

  Alan Cumming

• When you’re on TV, you come into people’s homes. In theater and film, they go to you – to the temple of the cinema or theater. And it’s very different.

  Alan Cumming

• When there’s an adult person who’s scaring you, you grow up pretty quickly.

  Alan Cumming

• There are some days when you don’t feel like being Alan Cumming.

  Alan Cumming

• The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story’s going to end and how it’s going to go. But on television nobody knows what’s going to happen, even the writers.

  Alan Cumming

• Sometimes with people I know, they’re playing the hunky action guy and there’s resistance to them coming out because it’s so connected to straight masculinity. There’s a plastic kind of movie star who has a very short shelf with very small kind of ambition. I see that but I still don’t agree with it.

  Alan Cumming

• Sometimes people get really sniffy about the films you choose if you’ve done more dramatic projects or you’re classically trained.

  Alan Cumming

• So the experts think we could have an AIDS-free generation in Africa by 2015, even if the mothers are positive.

  Alan Cumming

• Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He’s hardcore to play because he’s displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.

  Alan Cumming

• Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety’s not my forte.

  Alan Cumming

• Once in a while it’s good to challenge yourself in a way that’s really daunting.

  Alan Cumming

• Nowadays people don’t know how to handle it if all the ends aren’t tied up and they’re not told what to think in films. And if they’re challenged, they think it’s something wrong with the film.

  Alan Cumming

• My mum always told me I was precious, while my dad always told me I was worthless. I think that’s a good grounding for a balanced life.

  Alan Cumming

• 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.

  Alan Cumming

• ‘Macbeth’ was the first play I ever read. In fact, I remember my brother Tom, who is six years older than me, coming home from school and telling me about it. He was the one that really got me going.

  Alan Cumming

• Macbeth was the first play I ever read.

  Alan Cumming

• 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.

  Alan Cumming

Alan Cumming (46)

Birth:	22nd January, 1965
Nationality:	Scottish
Profession:	Actor, Author, Director, Producer, Singer, Writer

About

Alan Cumming, OBE, is a Scottish stage, television and film actor, singer, writer, director, producer and author. His roles have included the M.C. Cumming was born in Aberfeldy, in Perthshire, Scotland, the son of Mary, 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 and two nephews. Brought up in Angus, Cumming attended Monikie Primary School and Carnoustie High School. Following graduation, he spent a year and a half employed as an editor and columnist for the pop and TV 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 eight years later and had no children.

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