Alan Cumming
Host

Alan Cumming is beyond eclectic. His most recent projects include creating a dance theatre piece about the Scottish bard Robert Burns, lip-synching the protagonist in a documentary, directing a podcast series about a sperm bank heist, playing a gangster opposite Liam Neason in a Neil Jordan film, curating a cabaret festival in Australia and recording a duet with a Gaelic rapper. 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’s High School Reunion, Mayor Menlove in Schmigadoon and himself on Broad City.

He is the author of six 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!’