Alan Cumming (born 27 January 1965) is a Scottish actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he has received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, an Emmy Award, two Tony Awards, and an Olivier Award. He received the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy Performance for the West End production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1991). His other Olivier-nominated roles were in The Conquest of the South Pole (1988), La Bête (1992), and Cabaret (1994). Cumming won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical for reprising his role as the Emcee on Broadway in Cabaret (1998). His other performances on Broadway include Design for Living (2001), and Macbeth (2013).
Cumming is known for his film roles in Circle of Friends (1995), GoldenEye (1995), Emma (1996), Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997), Spice World (1997), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Nicholas Nickleby (2002), The Tempest (2010), Burlesque (2010), and Battle of the Sexes (2017). He also known for his roles as Fegan Floop in the Spy Kids trilogy (2001–2003), Nightcrawler in X2 (2003), and Loki in Son of the Mask (2005).
On television, Cumming is best known for his role in the CBS series The Good Wife (2010–2016), for which he was nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, two Golden Globe Awards. Cumming also starred in the CBS series Instinct (2018–2019) and the Apple TV+ series Schmigadoon! (2021–2023). Cumming has written a novel, Tommy's Tale (2002), and two memoirs in 2014 and 2019.
Early life
Cumming was born on 27 January 1965 in Aberfeldy, Perthshire, UK. His mother, Mary Darling, was an insurance company secretary and his father, Alex Cumming, was the head forester of Panmure Estate, which is located near Carnoustie, on the east coast of Scotland, and is where Cumming grew up. He has described the environment as "feudal". He has a brother, Tom, who is six years older, and a niece and two nephews. His brother is a property manager in Southampton, UK. Cumming attended Monikie Primary School and Carnoustie High School.
In his autobiography Not My Father's Son, Cumming describes the emotional and physical violence his father inflicted on him in his childhood. His mother found it impossible to obtain a divorce until she was financially independent. Cumming said that, after his early 20s, he did not have any communication with his father until just before the filming of his episode of the series Who Do You Think You Are? He then found out his father had believed that Cumming was not his biological son. Later, Cumming and his brother took DNA tests that proved they were indeed his biological children.
Cumming said that his difficult childhood taught him how to act by "needing to suppress my own emotions and feelings around him [his father] when I was a little boy".
Career
1984–1999
In 1984, Cumming made his television debut in ITV Granada's Travelling Man, before going on to appear later in the 1980s in the Scottish Television series Take the High Road, Taggart and Shadow of the Stone. Cumming made his film debut in Gillies MacKinnon's short film Passing Glory in 1986. His breakthrough television role was as Bernard Bottle in the Christmas 1991 BBC comedy Bernard and the Genie, a Richard Curtis-scripted film in which he starred alongside Lenny Henry and Rowan Atkinson. He also featured in a comic relief sketch in 1993 on the popular UK television show Blind Date with Atkinson playing Mr. Bean. Cumming went on to star as flight attendant Sebastian Flight in the BBC2 sitcom The High Life in 1995. 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. Also in 1995, Cumming appeared in the series Ghosts.
His feature film debut came in 1992 when he starred alongside Sandrine Bonnaire and Bruno Ganz in Ian Sellar's Prague, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and earned him the Best Actor award at the Atlantic Film Festival and a Scottish BAFTA Best Actor nomination. American audiences first saw him portraying the smarmy Sean Walsh, an unwanted suitor of Minnie Driver's character, in Circle of Friends, an Irish film released in 1995. Also in 1995 he played Boris Ivanovich Grishenko in the James Bond film GoldenEye. He also played Mr. Elton in Emma in 1996.