Romeo is the most misunderstood character in literature, I think. He’s hardcore to play because he’s displaying the characteristics of Hamlet at the beginning, and, well, then everything else happens.
ALAN CUMMINGI love a film where I get squished by two dumpsters or I fly through the air.
More Alan Cumming Quotes
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For example, Americans seem reluctant to take on Shakespeare because you don’t think you’re very good at it – which is rubbish. You’re missing out here.
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Pantomime is a big thing in the cultural calendar of my country, you know. So subtlety’s not my forte.
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I’m not a fan of Twitter.
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I’m quite good, though I say it myself, at making strangers feel at ease.
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A sweaty Macbeth with blood on his arms coming in fresh from the battle doesn’t interest me.
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Usually, there’s a story I’ve told that leads up to why I’m singing the song. The whole concept of the show was about being authentic and connecting with these songs. The best way to do that was in a room with an audience and for people to listen to that.
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If they’re not seeing that their society sees gay people as equals, how could you tell them what they’re doing is wrong?
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If you are a cabaret artist and you are mostly singing other people’s songs, you’re asking them to rethink a song, listen to it in a different way. The most impact you can have while asking them to re-listen to a song is if it’s a song they know very well.
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Often for me, if I hear a song I know, it clicks for me and I hear it in a different way and I think, “I could sing that song. I’ve got something to say about that song. Wanting to connect with an audience and wanting them to rethink songs.
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There are some days when you don’t feel like being Alan Cumming.
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When you’re on TV, you come into people’s homes. In theater and film, they go to you – to the temple of the cinema or theater. And it’s very different.
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He … knew, in that instant, that his life would not be an easy one-he was different, he looked different, he thought differently.
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It just seems to me that it’s hypocritical for us as a culture to say, “Bullying is a terrible thing,” when really, they are just reflecting what the society is doing.
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With Urban Secrets, I just really liked the idea of wandering around chatting to people.
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I think American actors are much more intimidated by Shakespeare.
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I was horrified when Richard Chamberlain and Rupert Everett said gay actors should stay in the closet. They were saying to people that they should live a lie and not be liberated, to live in fear of being found out.
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I had to be a grown-up when I should have been a little boy, and now that I’m a grown-up my little-boyness has exploded out of me. I’ve lived my life backwards.
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Some things are just really difficult to do. That’s what I find hard. I usually can find a way to do a character to make it real and work. But sometimes it’s a struggle sustaining that, because there’s such a level of personal involvement and personal, physical, and emotional distraughtness.
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Performing a one-man Macbeth feels like the greatest challenge.
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I always think about a little gay boy in Wisconsin or a little lesbian in Arkansas seeing someone like me, and if I cannot be open in my life, how on earth can they?
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I come more to Scotland than I ever used to, so I feel more connected to it, more part of the zeitgeist. You know when you realize you have a choice and I’m choosing my homeland. It’s funny: when you get older these things creep up to you.
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The thing with film and theater is that you always know the story so you can play certain cues in each scene with the knowledge that you know where the story’s going to end and how it’s going to go. But on television nobody knows what’s going to happen, even the writers.
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It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.
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Actually I like working kind of fast, because if you got it, why bother doing it over and over?
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It’s hardly ever done, compared to how often it’s done in other companies, not just Britain. Someone from the Roundabout Theater Company – I said, “You never do Shakespeare.” And he said, “Yes, we’re not very good at it.” And I thought, “What a terrible thing to say.”.
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Macbeth was the first play I ever read.
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