Alan Cumming Quotations

It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.

I had to be a grown-up when I should have been a little boy, and now that I'm a grown-up my little-boyness has exploded out of me. I've lived my life backwards.

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

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

It's about how you exist as a person in the world, and the idea that your work is more important than you as a person is a horrible, horrible message. I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?

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.

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.

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.

I don't feel I'm a compulsive person. I multitask. I'm really well-organised, and I have lots of people to help me.

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

I think you can be as big as you like as long as you mean it. I really do.

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

I come more to Scotland than I ever used to, so I feel more connected to it, more part of the zeitgeist. You know when you realize you have a choice and I'm choosing my homeland. It's funny: when you get older these things creep up to you.

I'm Scottish first, and it's odd to hear that I'm a Scottish-American.

Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over?

Actors aren't stupid, mostly, and if there's a sensibility and an aesthetic that a director's going for, if you're aware of that too, you can do things to help that.

I like the tragedies way more than the comedies because they're so universal.

I like working on things that are very different and that involve different disguises.

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

For example, Americans seem reluctant to take on Shakespeare because you don't think you're very good at it - which is rubbish. You're missing out here.

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.

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.

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.

A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.

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

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

I don't avoid anyone but I always think some people hate me.

I love a film where I get squished by two dumpsters or I fly through the air.

I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare.

I was so scared of going back to the theatre after 'Hamlet.' I didn't know if I'd do a play again because I was afraid of the power of it.

I'm quite good, though I say it myself, at making strangers feel at ease.

In my first year at drama school, I did this kids' show called 'Let's See.

It's really rare for film directors to be that interested in things other than themselves.

Macbeth was the first play I ever read.

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

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.

I started to itch to do a play again and 'Macbeth' came to the surface in my mind. I never thought I would do it in a conventional way. A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn't interest me.

I usually can find a way to do a character to make it real and work. But sometimes it's a struggle sustaining that, because there's such a level of personal involvement and personal, physical, and emotional distraughtness.

I was horrified when Richard Chamberlain and Rupert Everett said gay actors should stay in the closet. They were saying to people that they should live a lie and not be liberated, to live in fear of being found out

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think people deny themselves by putting themselves into categories.

He ... knew, in that instant, that his life would not be an easy one-he was different, he looked different, he thought differently.

You should *have* an experience; it shouldn't just *be* an experience.

Be who you like as long as you mean it.

Sometimes people do you a favour when they drop out of your life.

It's actually quite a good ethos for life: go into the unknown with truth, commitment, and openness and mostly you'll be okay.

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

Most people will never know anything beyond what they see with their own two eyes.

It's exciting to be with really, really good people. Some people make you feel like you've got to up your game. Working with good people is always good.

I'm not a fan of Twitter.

Often for me, if I hear a song I know, it clicks for me and I hear it in a different way and I think, "I could sing that song. I've got something to say about that song. Wanting to connect with an audience and wanting them to rethink songs; it is actually important to do songs they're familiar with. Also, I love those songs. In a way, I think I've changed people's perceptions of what a cabaret show like this could be.

If you are a cabaret artist and you are mostly singing other people's songs, you're asking them to rethink a song, listen to it in a different way. The most impact you can have while asking them to re-listen to a song is if it's a song they know very well.

I have no regrets in my life even the crazy things I've been in. It all made me the I am today and I wouldn't change anything. I'm happy with who I am!

It's interesting, for me sappy means sentimental and something that gets you in your heart, gets you emotional. That's what I mean. Also, of course, it means that I'm slightly setting up the audience that there's a bit of fun involved, as well.

I'd been depressed before, of course. But I'm talking about really depressed. Not just feeling a bit down or sad, a depression that has something to do with biorhythms. I'm talking about the kind of depressed that floats in upon you like a fog. You can feel it coming and you can see where it is going to take you but you are powerless, utterly powerless to stop it. I know now.

Finally, the scariest thing about abuse of any shape or form, is, in my opinion, not the abuse itself, but that if it continues it can begin to feel commonplace and eventually acceptable.

Usually, there's a story I've told that leads up to why I'm singing the song. The whole concept of the show was about being authentic and connecting with these songs. The best way to do that was in a room with an audience and for people to listen to that.

It's a sort of anti-Broadway musical. It's odd, disjointed and spiky.