KEYNOTE: Cumming of Age: Celebrating Queer Art and Activism - A conversation with actor & author Alan Cumming

Alan Cumming

Alan Cumming is beyond eclectic. His most recent projects include hosting (and slaying fashion-wise) the global cultural phenomenon The Traitors, creating a solo dance theatre piece about the Scottish bard Robert Burns, lip-synching the protagonist in a documentary and producing a podcast series about a sperm bank heist. He will soon be seen as Sigmund Freud in the film V13, as an elderly woman with a pet crab in the Disney kids series Robogobo and heard in a duet with Gaelic rapper Griogair Labhruidh! Perhaps not surprisingly, Time Magazine called him one of the three most fun people in show business (the others were Cher and Stanley Tucci!)

Thirty years ago his Hamlet stormed the West End and he was hailed as ‘an actor knocking at the door of greatness’. A quarter of a century ago he was a sensation as Cabaret’s Master of Ceremonies in a production that forever changed the Broadway landscape . A decade ago his visceral, virtually one man Macbeth was a stunning, transatlantic coup de theatre.

His screen work ranges from art house to blockbuster, cult to mainstream, but his performances are always indelible and some immortal: Mr Floop in Spy Kids, Eli in The Good Wife, Nightcrawler in X2: X Men United, Sebastian in The High Life, ‘O’ in Sex and the City, Boris in Goldeneye, King James in Doctor Who, Sandy Frink in Romy and Michele’sHigh School Reunion, Mayor Menlove in Schmigadoon and himself on Broad City.

He is the author of seven books including a New York Times #1 bestselling memoir, performs in concert regularly in halls around the world and co-owns his own, eponymous cabaret bar Club Cumming, a home for ‘all ages, all genders, all colours, all sexualities, where kindness is all and anything could happen!’

The list of his collaborators over the years includes Liza Minnelli, Jeremy O. Harris, Jackie Chan, the Smurfs, David Bowie, The Simpsons, Robert Wilson, Stanley Kubrick, Jay Z, Bianca Del Rio, the Spice Girls, George Lucas, Terence Blanchard, KT Tunstall and not forgetting Dora the Explorer, Arthur and Elmo.

He had a photo exhibition named Alan Cumming Snaps!and an award-winning fragrance named Cumming. He has played Dionysus, the Devil, God, the Pope and was shot by Herb Ritts for Vanity Fair as Pan. He recently played a 70 year old woman. He has been a Lee Jeans model and on a stamp. He is a Tony and Olivier award winning theatre actor. He hosted the Tonys and was nominated for an Emmy for doing so. In fact he has been nominated for five Emmys, won a New York Emmy, a Scottish BAFTA and a British Comedy Award. He is an Independent Spirit award-winning producer and National Board of Review winning director. He is a Grammy and multiple Golden Globe nominee. His portrait was hung inthe Scottish National Portrait Gallery. He has four honourary doctorates and over forty awards for being a humanitarian, but as he says, ‘awards mean nothing’!

In a city of multihyphenates, none can compete with the indefatigable Alan Cumming Time Out New York

Alan Cumming comes across as a man of real intellectual and moral substance who often – for his own good reasons – presents himself as a bit of a showbiz airhead The Scotsman

A bawdy counter-cultutal sprite The New York Times

Cumming has held the title of queer icon since the late 90s, when he was described by the New York Observer as a “frolicky pansexual sex symbol for the new millennium”. The Guardian