Quotes By Alan Cumming

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I'm not a fan of Twitter.

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

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

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

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.

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

I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

'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.