Alan Cumming dishes on three of his most memorable movie roles ahead of his Australian tour

Alan Cumming dishes on three of his most memorable film roles – including his face-off with Tom Cruise and watching the Spice Girls fall apart.

How do you interview someone like Alan Cumming in just 15 minutes?

The Scottish-born star has an eye-wateringly diverse acting resumé, covering everything from Hamlet to Josie And The Pussycats.

He’s also an author, cabaret artist, club owner, podcast host, and even launched his own celebrity fragrance called Cumming (you there, in the back – stop sniggering).

With the clock ticking, best to just jump in and handpick a few personal favourites from his career. Cumming says he always finds it interesting learning which of his performances have resonated with different people.

“I used to play a game, trying to guess where people knew me from,” he tells news.com.au. “‘OK, you’re about 25, you’re looking a little awe-struck … I imagine it might be Spy Kids?’ Or if it’s an old lady: ‘Oh, you saw me when I hosted Masterpiece Mystery.’ It’s a very wide cross-section, and I like that.”

Alan Cumming sings on the balcony during his time in quarantine in Adelaide. Picture: Alan Cumming/Instagram

Cumming’s speaking to me from his twelfth day of hotel quarantine in Adelaide. It’s his fourth stint in quarantine since the pandemic began – he never really stopped working, and each new job has required a strict lockdown.

Given he’s partly here in his capacity as artistic director of the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, he wasn’t tempted to see out his quarantine in a luxurious country manor like some other visiting celebs - “I don’t think the Festival’s budget could run to a mansion,” he quips.

Cumming’s about to embark on an Australian tour. Picture: Francis Hills

First order of business when he’s freed – and before he heads out on a national tour of his cabaret show Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age – is a “big, blowout Saturday night out … Adelaide had better watch out.”

Before that, though, he good-naturedly endures this walk down memory lane. We’re starting with Sandy Frink – how could we not?

Romy And Michele’s High School Reunion (1997)

A dance routine for the ages.

Cumming’s first big American role came playing Frink, an erection-prone teenage geek in the 1997 cult classic Romy And Michele’s High School Reunion. Subversive and surreal, the film boasted a killer cast, including Lisa Kudrow, Mira Sorvino and Janeane Garofalo.

I read you couldn’t quite understand why you, a Scottish unknown, had even been cast.

“I actually couldn’t believe it. It doesn’t really make that much sense – I’d never played an American before, and never done a movie in Hollywood. When you’re new blood, you do the rounds and read a million scripts, and it was the first one where I went, ‘Oh this is good. This is not the usual Hollywood trash.’ I loved that it had two female leads – one day when we were filming, I remember saying to the writer, ‘Oh my god, I’m the girl in this film, aren’t I?’ Normally it would be two men (as leads), and the girl would float in and out. The structure of it was so subversive.”

There’s an extended dream sequence in the film where you play a ‘hunky’ model version of yourself with the help of prosthetics. You’re completely unrecognisable.

Yep, that’s Alan Cumming under there.

“Well there’s a lot of prosthetics! It took a long time to look like that. I was able to choose Alec Baldwin’s lips, Brad Pitt’s’ forehead … it was amazing, I made up a face for myself based on all these handsome movie star’s best bits.”

You worked with Lisa Kudrow just as Friends was taking off – what was that like?

“She did it on the hiatus at the end of the first season. And Mira had just won the Oscar for Mighty Aphrodite, so the pair of them were just on this huge roll. Lisa was by far the big sensation – the cast member everyone would go nuts for. And I love Lisa; she’s really one of those brilliant people. Brilliantly clever, hilarious, and with a great sense of humanity as well. I mean, The Comeback? A work of genius.”

Spice World: The Movie (1997)

Disturbingly, the film was snubbed at that year’s Oscars.

This celeb cameo-filled caper was filmed at the peak of Spice mania; the group famously recorded their second album between takes in a studio on the film set. By the time it was released in cinemas, they’d dramatically sacked their manager. Six months after that, Geri left the group. Cumming played Piers Cuthbertson-Smyth, hapless filmmaker tasked with making a fly-on-the-wall doco about the group.

You were with them before the wheels fell off – were you concerned about how sustainable it all was, with the pace at which they were working?

“When we were making the film, it was the best time. They couldn’t believe all this was happening to them, and we were having an absolute laugh. It was the height of everything, just the best: a basket of fruit when it’s really ripe, just before it starts to go off. That was in the summer – at the beginning of the next year, they came to launch the film, and that’s when I saw that things had started to go a bit weird. You had to sign NDAs … I saw the cracks starting to happen when they were promoting the film.

Cumming’s role in the film led to a lasting friendship with the group.

“Very quickly after that, Geri left. She actually came to see me in New York in secret … then the girls came because they were doing the tour. So I was kind of ‘Spice hub’. I went on the Spice jet with the girls to some concert in Pennsylvania. It was so tragic, I remember taking a photo backstage of the empty dressing room that was meant to be Geri’s. It was so weird.

But I love Geri. She was just on my podcast a few weeks ago. I love her energy – she’s really creative and curious, bettering herself and learning more. And she came to see Hamlet at college, just a few days after her father had died, and said that I onstage was expressing all the grief that she couldn’t yet express in her real life. She had this connection with me before we met, and that’s why she wanted me to do the Spice World film. I can’t believe I got a job in a Spice Girls film because Ginger Spice saw my Hamlet!”

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Going head-to-head with Tom Cruise.

Cumming had a small but pivotal role as a flirty hotel clerk in Stanley Kubrick’s last film, which held the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous film shoot at 400 days. He stole the show in his one short scene alongside A-lister Tom Cruise.

You’re in the movie for all of three-and-a-half minutes – how long did that scene take to shoot?

“That was like a week. Since then I’ve done lots of television, where if I was doing that scene nowadays, I’d be home by lunchtime. With Stanley, we did it for a week. I loved it though – it made me feel excited about acting again. He made every detail important, and I knew exactly why we were doing each take. You don’t usually get that – it’s, ‘That was perfect! One more!’ and you think, ‘Well if it was perfect, why are we doing another one?’

At the time I was a bit disillusioned with acting – if I hadn’t done that, maybe I would have stopped acting? Who knows?”

Watching the scene on YouTube, there are a lot of questions from fans in the comments about whether that flirty subtext was in the script, or was something you brought to the role.

“Oh my god, it was hardly subtext! There’s very little ‘underneath’ about it. That was in the script, and I was saying to Stanley, ‘Oh gosh, it’s too much. I’m going too far.’ ME saying that! I am not a subtle performer! But I was forced on to an even bigger performance and more lasciviousness.

“And it was really interesting – at the time, there were all these rumours about Tom’s sexuality, so I think that’s why it was so sensational when it came out. Also, it was the only funny scene in the whole movie.”

Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age tours nationally in June and July, with a second show at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre just announced. Tickets and info through Frontier Touring.