Outstanding Contribution to Film & Television – Alan Cumming
My favourite, Alan Cumming, is being given aThe British Academy of Film and Television Arts in Scotland, BAFTA Scotland, award this Sunday.
He will be given the award for Outstanding Contribution to Film & Television 2018.
Cumming was born in Aberfeldy which will be well known to those of you who have read his autobiography
He trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow.
After leaving the Academy he quickly found himself celebrated in his homeland for both his television work (including Take the High Road) and his stand-up comedy (the legendary Victor and Barry, which he wrote and performed with Forbes Masson). Since then Cumming’s TV roles have included Sex and the City, Frasier and The L Word.
He played political spin doctor Eli Gold in seven seasons of the CBS hit series The Good Wife, for which he received numerous awards and accolades, and now stars in the CBS Series Instinct.
His stellar career on film has alternated between blockbusters such as X2: X Men United, the Spy Kids Trilogy, Golden Eye and smaller independent films such as Titusopposite Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Lange, which he also produced and which earned him an Independent Spirit Award.
He has made films with Stanley Kubrick and The Spice Girls, been described by Time magazine as one of the most fun people in show business and he has won a Tony, hosted the Tonys and been nominated for an Emmy for doing so.
The reason we love him is that he brought his show Alan Cumming Sings Sappy Songs to Edinburgh for a three week residency during the Edinburgh International Festival 2016. As well as the show itself he opened Club Cumming at The Hub after-hours and visited Castlebrae Community High School to speak to the young people there.
Club Cumming usually has its home in New York City where Cumming was the first Grand Marshal of the Tartan Day Parade.
In August this year we were lucky enough to attend the ‘one night only’ Club Cumming at Leith Theatre where his mum and husband were among the VIPs on the balcony along with Edinburgh’s Eric Von Ibler who used to teach him to sing. (Eric has in his own words ‘not retired in any way’ and his Schola Cantorum concert in December at St Giles is not to be missed.)
The British Academy Scotland Awards Ceremony will be streamed live on Facebook from 19:00 GMT on Sunday 4 November. Red Carpet coverage will be live from 17:00.
Alan said :
I couldn’t be happier or more proud to receive this special BAFTA award. I shot my first ever film in Glasgow and my first few years in the business were nearly all spent in the employ of Scottish television, so my roots in acting for the screen are very entrenched in Scotland. And of course my heart is too.
Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.
