We value Alan Cumming's appetite for eccentric supporting parts and his willingness to be conspicuous. The caveat is that a memorable appearance can leave us wishing he had been given a fuller character to play.
Fi1m perspective
Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye (1995) is a useful place to begin with Alan Cumming: a supporting character played with little interest in being discreet. We enjoyed his eccentricity because it gave us another source of pleasure besides Bond. Martin Campbell makes the film brisk and entertaining, and Cumming's conspicuousness suits it. The risk with this kind of acting is that we remember the eccentricity more clearly than the character, but we would not ask him to become more ordinary to avoid it.
His Desk Clerk in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) is a smaller appearance in a markedly different film. Kubrick's patient, unsettling treatment of jealousy gives a distinctive supporting actor a different pace to work within. We appreciate the casting without making Cumming responsible for everything we admire about the film. These two parts suggest why his flamboyance is useful: he makes a supporting character worth noticing, even when the principal business is elsewhere. Neither gives the whole picture of what he does.
For that, the stage work matters. His association with the Emcee in Cabaret runs from the West End in 1993 through Broadway in 1998 to a revival in 2014, with Sam Mendes among his directors. Returning to that role across decades complicates any simple account of an actor specialising in brief, eccentric appearances. The subsequent film work includes Fegan Floop in Spy Kids (2001) and Nightcrawler in X2 (2003), keeping unusual characters prominent in his work for family and superhero films.
Eli Gold in The Good Wife (2010–2016) supplies something the film appearances discussed here cannot: a sustained dramatic television role. We should give that work its due before treating theatricality as the only thing he offers. Being readily recognisable is no reason to expect an actor to spend a career apologising for it. Start with GoldenEye for the pleasure of his conspicuous supporting turn, allowing for the film's less convincing attempts to give Bond more emotional weight.
Biography
Alan Cumming is a Scottish actor, filmmaker and presenter. He was born on 27 January 1965 in Aberfeldy, Perthshire, and trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, graduating in 1985.
Cumming is known for stage roles including the Emcee in the Broadway revival of Cabaret (1998), for which he won a Tony Award, and earlier work in the West End production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1991). His film credits include Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye (1995), Fegan Floop in the Spy Kids films (2001–2003) and Nightcrawler in X2 (2003). On television he played Eli Gold in The Good Wife (2010–2016).
