2 Alan Cumming Interviews

Superhero Hype let us in on two Alan Cumming Inte

First up, the Independent:

The memory of his make-up sessions drives the normally charming and equable Cumming into frothy rage. "The face was done, oh, 40 times, four hours of make-up each time, and I had to get up at 2am to be ready the same time as everybody else..." Was it all worth it? "A lot of the time, it's just boring because those big action sequences take for ever to do, and it was a long, long shoot, so you kind of lose sight of reality. I spent weeks just wandering around corridors or flying through the air or killing someone. So it's not very fulfilling intellectually or emotionally." He reconsiders. "Well, it's emotionally draining because you want to cry all the time, about having to get up at two in the morning. But when I saw the opening sequence, I was laughing my tits off. Because, you know, you don't expect to be a superhero. It's not really the, ah, logical career path you might have expected."

He is refreshingly unserious about the logic of characters with special "powers". At one point he has to carry the wheelchair-borne Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) to save him from danger – "and, yes I know, it's hilarious, isn't it, because we're all, like, superheroes, right? So why am I carrying him when I could teleport him? And Halle [Berry, playing Storm] has to run up these stairs before the dam explodes, and she's wearing heels and the stairs are, like, metal grid, so her heels were going through them. It's all a bit... un-superhero-like."

He chuckles. Cumming is delightful; playful, forthcoming and indefinably seductive. He seems a chap constantly on the lookout for a good time. And he has a (much deployed and probably much-practised) killer grin, like that of a lecherous pixie. He has a reputation for either tactlessness or for speaking his mind, depending on your point of view, which, today, leads him to dismiss the whole fantasy-blockbuster genre: "I probably wouldn't go and see this film if I wasn't in it. It's not really my bag." Would the producers of X-Men 2 mind him saying that? "I don't know. I don't really care. People ask me questions about Spider-Man and Daredevil and I've not seen those either. But then quite a lot of the films I've made I wouldn't go and see if I wasn't in them."

The LA Times also chatted with him:

Lighting a cigarette, Cumming explains that he took the part for a number of reasons. "I will tell you the most altruistic one," he says, smiling. "I had never read the comics and I didn't see the first film. When I read it, it was a surprise to me. I really liked the message in the film that we need to be more tolerant and understanding of other cultures different than ours and not to think because they are different they are bad. I thought it was amazing and unexpected. I also liked the surprisingness of my character. When he's not being injected to do bad things, he's quite sensitive. And I liked flying through the air and killing people."

He describes himself as the "Cute Mute" of the film. He has nicknamed his equally blue-skinned co-star Rebecca Romijin-Stamos, the "Beaut Mute" and Hugh Jackman, who plays Wolverine, is the "Brute Mute."

Director Bryan Singer pursued Cumming, having seen him in several movies, but what particularly impressed Singer was his Tony Award-winning role as the Emcee in Sam Mendes' Broadway revival of the musical "Cabaret."

"At first he was not available," says Singer. "Then closer toward production he became available and we got him." Singer thought he would be the perfect Nightcrawler because Cumming has a "charming sensitivity and a sense of humor but a kind of wicked side and a personality and a presence that would emerge even behind the makeup. What is most interesting about his character is that actually he has come to a place of faith and acceptance of what he is and yet by his history, the journey to get there was a difficult one."

As much as Cumming enjoyed his character, he didn't enjoy the 10 hours it took to get into makeup and devil tail. He had three different types of tails in the film — a "really boingy-boingy one, a more swishy one and a more flaccid one."

The first time he wore the "boingy-boingy" one, Cumming hit himself in the face.

"Once or twice, he knocked me in the head," says Singer. "I even took all the sandwiches off the table at one time," Cumming adds, laughing.

Visit the links above for much more!

EarthsMightiestAdmin
4/28/2003
Superhero Hype

2 Alan Cumming Interviews

Related News