Alan Cumming names his five favourite movies of all time
The Scottish actor Alan Cumming may not be a glitzy Hollywood name akin to Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, but the highly-recognisable star certainly has a strong legion of fans. Collaborating with a number of significant filmmakers in his career, including Stanley Kubrick, Martin Campbell, Stephen Kay and Bryan Singer, Cumming is known to contemporary audiences for his role as the eccentric villain Fegan Floop in the 2001 family flick Spy Kids.
Like many modern actors, Cumming was also reigned into starring in a superhero movie, with Singer and 20th Century Fox hiring the actor for X-Men 2 in 2003, where he starred alongside the likes of Brian Cox, Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in a pivotal film for the rise of comic-book cinema. Considered one of the best movies of the fan-favourite franchise, Cumming helps to make a villainous ensemble as the shape-shifter Nightcrawler.
As a result of his X-Men success, in addition to his three-time Emmy award-nominated performance in the TV show The Good Wife, Cumming has gained a considerable following. With this in mind, the actor sat down with Rotten Tomatoes in 2012 to discuss his five favourite films of all time, shedding light on the mind behind the marvellous performer.
First on the actor’s list is the 1958 Morton DaCosta romantic comedy Auntie Mame, starring Rosalind Russell and Peggy Cass. Speaking about the movie, Cumming states: “If anyone comes to my house in the country and has never seen this film, I always show it…It is a joyous, crazy cartoon of a movie that has a little bit of everything, but at the heart is this woman we’d have all loved to have known and have taken us under her wing”.
Keeping on the theme of rather obscure movies, Cumming’s second choice is the 2001 documentary Home Movie by Chris Smith, which explores five unusual homes and the people who built them. “I fell upon this documentary and it is an absolute gem,” Cumming told the publication, adding, “What makes it so is the five people’s homes that we are invited into. Their homes are — of course — insane, but it’s their happiness and comfort with them that is really the thrill”.
Taking his interests abroad, Cumming’s third choice is the French movie The Lovers on the Bridge from the Holy Motors director Leos Carax. Released in 1991, the story follows a troubled couple who form a close bond whilst sleeping rough on Paris’s Pont-Neuf bridge. Calling the film “absolutely glorious,” Cumming praises the performance of Juliette Binoche, explaining, “She is amazing in this film and it’s a really heartbreaking tale of loss and hurt. The scene where she water-skis up the Seine is one of my favorite spectacles in all of cinema”.
A classic of British cinema follows in the form of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s peculiar war movie A Matter of Life and Death, a film that Cumming saw as a child and has stayed with him ever since, thanks to its dreamlike exploration of mortality. “Powell/Pressburger are amazing filmmakers,” he tells the publication: “I wish we had more like them these days. “Magical realism” is a rather trite phrase, but their films are both magical and real”.
Alan Cumming’s favourite movies:
- Auntie Mame (Morton DaCosta, 1958)
- Home Movie (Chris Smith, 2001)
- The Lovers on the Bridge (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf) (Leos Carax, 1991)
- A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
- Waiting for Guffman (Christopher Guest, 1996)
Bookending Cumming’s list is the Christopher Guest comedy Waiting for Guffman, starring Eugene Levy, Fred Willard and Parker Posey. “I think this is a work of genius,” the actor states about the film that follows a small-town Missouri musical production that becomes a major performance, adding: “It manages to be utterly hilarious, completely tender and touching, and biting and satirical at the same time. It actually taught me a lot about America”.
