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| Photo: Kevin Garcia | |
An award-winning actor, singer, writer, producer and director, Alan Cumming recently starred in a one-man staging of Macbeth on Broadway and appears on the Emmy Award-winning television show The Good Wife. He won a Tony Award for his portrayal of the Emcee in the Broadway musical Cabaret, a role he is reprising in 2014. He hosts PBS Masterpiece Mystery, and has appeared in many films, including Spy Kids, Titus, X2: X-Men United, The Anniversary Party, Any Day Now and Eyes Wide Shut. He's now written a memoir, Not My Father's Son (Dey Street Books, October 7, 2014); watch the trailer here.
On your nightstand now:
White Girls by Hilton Als.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories.
Your top five authors:
Shakespeare, Janice Galloway, Margaret Atwood, Jean Rhys and Alasdair Gray.
Book you've faked reading:
Why would I fake reading a book? I don't see anything to be ashamed about in not having done something.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. There is a line in it about how a character's boney little chest could not contain the love he has in his heart. It just gets me.
Book you've bought for the cover:
I can only think that I've done that in relation to porn.
Book that changed your life:
I suppose Alice Miller's The Drama of Being a Child [also published as The Drama of the Gifted Child and Prisoners of Childhood].
Favorite line from a book:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." --Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Which character you most relate to:
Tintin.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. I felt like I was on drugs.