Alan Cumming

Alan Cumming, OBE (born 27 January 1965), is a Scottish actor. His London stage appearances include Hamlet, the Maniac in Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist, for which he received an Olivier Award, the lead in Martin Sherman's Bent, and as Dionysus in The National Theatre of Scotland's The Bacchae. On Broadway he has appeared as Mac the Knife in The Threepenny Opera, The Master of Ceremonies in Cabaret, for which he won a Tony Award in 1998, and Design for Living. Cumming also introduces Masterpiece Mystery! for PBS. He currently appears as Eli Gold on The Good Wife, for which he has been nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and Satellite Award. He has also written a novel, Tommy's Tale, had a cable talk show (Eavesdropping with Alan Cumming) and produced a line of perfumed products labelled "Cumming". He has contributed opinion pieces to many publications and performed a cabaret show I Bought A Blue Car Today. Retaining his British citizenship, Cumming became a naturalized U.S. citizen on November 7, 2008. --- Cumming was born in Aberfeldy, in Perthshire, Scotland, the son of Mary (née Darling), an insurance company secretary, and Alex Cumming, a forester. He has stated that his father was physically and emotionally abusive towards him. He has one older brother, Tom, and a niece and two nephews. Brought up in Angus, Cumming attended Monikie Primary School and Carnoustie High School. Following graduation, he spent a year and a half employed as an editor and columnist for the pop and TV magazine TOPS before entering the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Cumming made his film debut in Gillies MacKinnon's Passing Glory in 1986. 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 playing the oleaginous 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. In the mid-1980s Cumming made his TV debut in the Scottish Television series Taggart. He went onto star in STV's Shadow of the Stone and as Jim Hunter, an evil woodcutter, in the Scottish soap opera Take The High Road. He also appeared as the Angel in the lyrical Channel 4 series Heavenly. Cumming has guested on several US TV shows: In 2001, he appeared in the HBO comedy Sex and the City as O the designer in the episode, 'The Real Me'. 2003 saw him playing a cameo role in the sitcom Frasier, playing Niles' yoga instructor. He also guest starred on 3rd Rock from the Sun. --- On graduation from Drama school, Cumming married fellow student, Hilary Lyon; they divorced eight years later and had no children.