YOU
MY LIFE GOTTA GET
IN STORIES BIGGER
AND DREAMS
PICTURES
Alan Cumming
IMAGES FROM THE BOOK
Final_AlanCumming_001-272.indd 2-3 5/9/16 5:16 PM Dedication: Grant and Jerry, home, 2015. To the Left, To the Left: Granny
To the Left, To the Left: Family Portrait To the Left, To the Left: Sheep and Lambs Lustrous Pinnacle: Elizabeth Taylor in the New York Times Crocs Page Six
Page Six: The referenced photo Travels with Honey Travels with Honey Travels with Honey: Sunday
Travels with Honey: Monday Travels with Honey: Monday
Travels with Honey: KFC-Taco Bell Travels with Honey: The Brave Chief
Travels with Honey: Tuesday Travels with Honey: Tuesday
Travels with Honey: Thunderbird Lodge’s rabbit with one antler Travels with Honey: The Mitchell Corn Palace Travels with Honey: The Badlands Travels with Honey: Mount Rushmore Travels with Honey: Wednesday
Travels with Honey: Thursday Travels with Honey: Thursday
Travels with Honey: Thursday Travels with Honey: Thursday
Travels with Honey: Arrival Travels with Honey: Honey on Rob’s Houseboat
Travels with Honey: Saturday Travels with Honey: Sunday Grant Grant, Medieval Times, 2014.
Snow Man Pool Boy
After Dark: Edie After Dark: Halloween Boy
After Dark: I don’t really know what to say about this picture. Anything I say will probably alter the impression already forming of it in your mind and I don’t want to interfere with that. Suffice to say nobody was harmed in the capturing of this image. In fact, everyone, including the people watching, was having a very good time. After Dark: Westgay After Dark: Rasputin This picture was taken at a party called Rasputin. Of course, because it was Hollywood, the boys in the picture were behind a screen. You can see me reflected in their beauty. After Dark: DJ Booth After Dark: Unknown cute boy somewhere in New York City, sometime this century.
After Dark: Once I went to a party that had a candy-floss room! This girl was not as impressed as I was. After Dark: Smith and Chris
After Dark: He needs no name. After Dark: I love waking up in the morning after a night out and finding pictures in my camera like this one. After Dark: This is me and a man in some bar who also had a mohawk. I was playing Mack the Knife in The Threepenny Opera at the time, so I was out every night exorcising the Brecht/Weill demons. After Dark: It’s amazing what you spy in doorways, minding your own business walking down the street. After Dark: Joan E, an old chum from Vancouver. After Dark: Naked Tony and Clio.
After Dark: Whitney entertaining the troops. After Dark: Diego.
After Dark: Joey. After Dark: Patrick.
After Dark: James. After Dark: Don’t ask.
After Dark: Didn’t catch her name. After Dark: Nor his.
After Dark: I call her “lolly snatcher.” After Dark: This was the morning after the night before scene in my LA hotel room after hosting the Britannia Awards in 2012.
After Dark: In a hotel room at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, 2004. After Dark: Drag queens are heroes . . . Or heroines.
After Dark: I tend to be looking down a lot by the end of an evening. After Dark: The night my father died.
After Dark: I would never put these in my body, but I do love a late-night snack stop. After Dark: Home.
Murray (King of the) Hill Jesus Take the Wheel
Travis and His Friend 22nd Street
22nd Street: Honey’s Stone Dog Chest Peace Chest Peace Summer Knee Jerk
Glenn Close’s Back Iris Apfel’s Hand Body Parts: A barman at a party in the Hollywood Hills, 2011.
Body Parts: Honey and me, at home, 2014. Body Parts: A lady in the bar of the Ritz Carlton, Boston, 2012.
Body Parts: Andrew, Sue, and me in a hotel room somewhere between Toulouse and St. Tropez, 1997. Body Parts: Grant and Leon, Montauk, 2012.
Body Parts: My legs, Cabaret costume fitting, 2014. Body Parts: Me, backstage at Cabaret, 2014.
Body Parts: Backstage at Broadway Bares, New York City, 2014. Body Parts: A burn on a waiter’s arm, New York City, 2012.
Body Parts: A barman at Flaming Saddles, New York City, 2014. Body Parts: Connie Nielson and Donna Karan at the CFDA after-party, New York City, 2005.
Body Parts: Me and Rob, Skye, 2003. Body Parts: My hand just before a performance of Macbeth on Broadway, 2013.
Body Parts: Mike Furey at Don Hill’s, New York City, 2011. Body Parts: Me doing an impersonation of Danny Burstein, Cabaret, New York City, 2014.
Body Parts: Will, backstage at Cabaret, 2014. Body Parts: Unknown boy, unknown location, sometime this century.
Body Parts: Reed, New York City, 2011. Body Parts: Jared in Sammy Jo’s bathroom, New York City, 2012.
Body Parts: Eva Mendes’ boobs, Roosevelt Hotel, Los Angeles, 2005. Fleshbot I Am Writing This Because Gore Vidal Told Me To: Memorial Order. I took this picture backstage at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City on August 23, 2012. Secrets and Lies: Ashtar and Susie
Diddy Fashion Feet Forward
Fashion Feet Forward Fashion Feet Forward Natalie Merchant’s Shoes Getting to Nomi You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams! Kylie
Kitten Iman
Head Down, Eyes Up Shona and Kerry
Leon in his national costume.
Life is a Game Self-Portrait, Marrakech
Caitlin’s Kitchen Mandatory Selfies: 1999, South of France. Showing off my new swimming trunks.
Mandatory Selfies: On second attempt. Mandatory Selfies: I had mirrors attached to my garden fence in London in 1994. Suddenly the garden seemed enormous!
Mandatory Selfies: Selftimie Mandatory Selfies: Connecticut, 2012. I am ironing a shirt in my swimming trunks for an event at which I will present and receive an award for Kristin Chenoweth, who couldn’t come as she had a neck injury from filmingThe Good Wife! Mandatory Selfies: Doing a self-timer tumble in Rome, bored, on a day off from the movieTitus , 1998. (And I know, self-timers are not, strictly speaking, selfies, but screw you!) Mandatory Selfies: 1994, Scotland, with my nephew Gary.
Mandatory Selfies: Me and my granny, Inverness, 1999. Mandatory Selfies: My adoring and adorable mum, Mary Darling, Inverness, 1999 . . .
Mandatory Selfies: . . . and New York City, 1999. Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 1998.
Mandatory Selfies: Spot the difference! Mandatory Selfies: Savoy Hotel, 2003. Mandatory Selfies: Two of my most attractive looks. LA, 1999.
Mandatory Selfies: Australia, 2004. Mandatory Selfies: LA, with Saffron, 1995.
Mandatory Selfies: 2000, Austin, Texas, with Robert Rodriguez on the set of Spy Kids with my prop action figure. Mandatory Selfies: Just two of my chameleon-like transformations. As the Great Gazoo in The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. . .
Mandatory Selfies: . . . and as one of Loki’s disguises inSon of the Mask, 2005. Mandatory Selfies: Backstage with Lypsinka at Roseland for the 1999 Broadway Bares.
Mandatory Selfies: Fort Lauderdale, 2015. I did a concert with my musical cohorts Lance Horne and Eleanor Norton, and this legend, Dina Martina, opened for us. Mandatory Selfies: New York City, with Bianca del Rio, 2014.
Mandatory Selfies: They were going for a light smoky-eye look. Kenneth Cole fashion show, New York City, 2014. Mandatory Selfies: The secret of my boyish good looks, 2014.
Mandatory Selfies: Channeling Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake at a photo shoot for Vintage magazine, New York City, 2015. Mandatory Selfies: Amy Arbus
Mandatory Selfies: One night at Club Cumming, aka my Cabaret dressing room at Studio 54, 2015. Varying degrees of snarl success. Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 1998. Life really was a cabaret.
Mandatory Selfies: Seconds after I ended a relationship, New York City, 1999. Mandatory Selfies: Spice World, London, 1997.
Mandatory Selfies: Post–Spice, LA, 2002. Mandatory Selfies: Kristin Chenoweth and me in 1999 shooting the TV movie of Annie.
Mandatory Selfies: Sixteen years later, shooting promos for the 2015 Tonys, which we hosted together. Mandatory Selfies: With Rosario Dawson in the makeup trailer of Josie and the Pussycats, Vancouver, 2000.
Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 2014. Teaching Matt Lauer the closed-lip snarl, not too successfully. Mandatory Selfies: My friend Andrew and I giving Vietnam chic, Saint-Tropez, 1999.
Mandatory Selfies: Puerto Rico, 1999. I am the whitest actor ever to play Cuban dictator General Batista. Mandatory Selfies: Upstate New York, 2004, with Bob the builder, the man who built my home.
Mandatory Selfies: Self-portrait with flowers, upstate New York, 2011. Mandatory Selfies: London, 1999, with my brother in what would become my dream party pad.
Mandatory Selfies: Blooming love, Glimmerglass, 2004. Mandatory Selfies: Family portrait the morning after Grant and I got married in New York City, 2012, on the fifth anniversary of our wedding in London.
Mandatory Selfies: New Zealand, 2015. We went on a helicopter ride and landed on a glacier! Mandatory Selfies: Sydney, Australia, 2015. Doing impersonations of each other in photographs.
Mandatory Selfies: LA, 2000. Happy. Mandatory Selfies: Rescue puppy love, New York City, 2011.
Mandatory Selfies: Honey and me, 2011. Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 2013, with Phyllis the raven, my co-star in Macbeth. Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 2013. TV boss.
Mandatory Selfies: Eli unleashed, just wrapped after a day of filming onThe Good Wife, Brooklyn, New York, 2012. Mandatory Selfies: Greenpoint, Brooklyn, 2014, with my TV daughter Sarah Steele.
Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 2014. Last day of filming season six of The Good Wife. Mandatory Selfies: Carmine has been looking after me for many years and through many hairstyles.
Mandatory Selfies: Club Cumming, aka my dressing room at Studio 54, 2014. Mandatory Selfies: Backstage atBroadway Bares, New York City, 1999.
Mandatory Selfies: The Tonys after-party at the Carlyle Hotel, New York City, 2013. Mandatory Selfies: Club Cumming, 2015
Mandatory Selfies: Celebrating not having died during my Tonys hosting duties, The Plaza Hotel, 2015. Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 2012, at Hal Prince’s holiday party. I wish I had had pearls.
Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 2015, with my goddaughter Gigi and her mom, Cynthia Rowley, at the latter’s fashion show. Mandatory Selfies: Golden Globes, LA, 2014, with Grant and Monica.
Mandatory Selfies: New York City,Saturday Night Live 40th celebration elevator selfie, 2015. Mandatory Selfies: New York City, 2013. I was a stamp once!
Mandatory Selfies:Sesame Street, 2014. Dreams do come true! Mandatory Selfies: One of the times I didn’t win the Emmy but just grabbed one at a party and took this picture anyway, 2015.
Mandatory Selfies: Vermont, 2015. Lost. Yes!: Alex Salmond
Yes!: Superman and Nicola Sturgeon Priests Texting
Sweet Liza Welcome to Action Movies I Once Sang at the Hollywood Bowl Jet Lag
First Class Dream: Seriously, if I was flying first class, this would be my dream. Awards: Ruth Wilson
Awards Acknowledgements: Jimmy Wilson About the Author