Quotes By Alan Cumming

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

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.

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 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.

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.

Macbeth was the first play I ever read.

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.