When it comes to accolades, Alan Cumming’s list is piling up: a BAFTA Award, five Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards and an Olivier Award. And some of that is due to his method for choosing roles.
“I just do what I like. I really do,” he says. “I think the biggest thing a success like ‘The Traitors’ has taught me is to give things a go. I’m willing to step outside my comfort zone or the career trajectory other people would think should be mine. I’ve actually always done that, and if you look at my CV, you will see it is pretty nuts and eclectic, but that really reflects my curiosity and willingness to give things a go. Life is a series of great adventures, and I like adventures.”
That daring method has paid off; on Jan. 8, Cumming will receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an honor he calls “actually insane.”
“It’s something so out of my expected career path or even my mental periphery. I am so grateful and kind of shocked by it. But it really has made me take stock and realize what an incredible journey I’ve had and how much I was helped by so many people in Hollywood and in America,” he says.
And for that reason, he’s inviting people he loves from the many different stages of his career to attend — “including friends I first stayed with when I came here to seek work, my first agent and friends I have made over the years,” Cumming explains.
“I think, as you get older, you realize that you are a product of everything that’s happened to you: I owe so much to being Scottish in terms of my training and the opportunities I was given, and then coming to America and having this incredible new range of opportunities has allowed me to live in an incredible way that I never thought was possible.”
This journey began when Cumming was just a young boy attending primary school in Scotland when a theater company put on a play at lunchtime.
“It completely changed my life,” he remembers. “I was mesmerized and, although I didn’t really understand it as show business then, I knew that whatever they were doing, whatever magic they were weaving, I wanted to be able to do it too. It wasn’t until many years later that I understood you could be an actor and make a living at it.”
Cumming made his acting debut on British TV in 1984, in the theater in 1987 (starring in “Cabaret,” a show he’d win his first Tony for 11 years later) and landed his first film role (“Prague”) in 1992.
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Eventually, he grew to love both the show side and the business side of his career, especially being able to travel the world and “having incredibly intense and intimate experiences with artists and people I admire and realizing that sometimes the work you do can make a difference to so many people’s lives.”
Although he’s been surrounded by support and there are people whom he hugely admires and respects, Cumming doesn’t like “the concept of role models” in his own life.
“I think it’s dangerous to want to emulate people too closely because, in focusing on them, you actually don’t fully investigate who you are and what your potential might be,” he says. “So, I suppose my biggest role model is myself. I have always forged my own idiosyncratic career path, I’ve been my own man, I’ve spoken about what I think is right and I’ve found a life that makes me very happy doing all of those things.”
Cumming wears so many hats — not just the berets and fedoras on “The Traitors.” He’s a writer, producer, actor, singer and host; in fact, he’s set to host the upcoming BAFTA Film Awards in February. He was also recently named the artistic director of Scotland’s Pitlochry Festival Theatre.
But don’t ask him to pick a favorite type of job.
“I feel it would be a bit like choosing a favorite child,” he explains. “I try to always stay in the moment and think that whatever I am working on right now is the most potentially fun and rewarding thing I’ve ever done, and I try to bring the same energy to everything I do.”
Still, the particularly challenging roles stand out — specifically, “Cabaret” on Broadway in 1998, “Bent” in the West End in 2006 and a “grueling” 2012 production of “Macbeth” in which he played every character.
“The physical challenges and the fact that you have to keep doing it night after night mean they are etched deeper into your psyche, I think,” says Cumming. “But there are also many film and TV roles that I have found incredibly rewarding, more so because they have had such a great effect on audiences.”
The examples he pulls are Fegan Floop in 2001’s “Spy Kids” and Billie Blaikie in six episodes of “The L Word” in 2006.
“They have stayed with people, and in some way, formed them and exposed them to things they didn’t know before,” he says. “That’s the power of movies and TV — its reach and its potential to educate and transform.”
“The Tratiors” Season 3 winners with Alan Cumming
Courtesy of Euan Cherry/Peacock
In 2023, the power of TV became even clearer. Cumming began hosting and producing Peacock’s “The Traitors.” The series quickly became an award winner, breaking into the difficult reality competition program category at the Emmys. Cumming has now won the host trophy two years in a row and, by 2025, the show took home all five Emmys it was nominated for.
“I think the basic premise of the game — that the audience knows who the baddies are straightaway — means that you dispense with the usual guessing game of whodunnit and you focus more on observing people under stress and seeing how they cope with sometimes having to do things they don’t like or aren’t that good at,” Cumming says of the show’s ability to break through and stand out. “We all lie, but we don’t always get to witness people doing it.”
He also credits the series’ production values, immersive audience experience and the campiness of the series, which he says has “really captured people’s imaginations” in a new way.
“It’s obviously something they need right now,” Cumming says. “We are living in a very scary and oppressive time and so I think [the fact] that people have embraced a show that so completely embraces a queer aesthetic is very gratifying.”
