Alan Cumming on Fame, Fortune, and a Marvel Comeback
Alan Cumming reflects on his Walk of Fame honour and teases a surprising Marvel return. Discover what the Scottish actor really thinks about his career’s twists and turns.
Alan Cumming has described his recent addition to the Hollywood Walk of Fame as “actually insane”, finding himself immortalised alongside the likes of Robert De Niro, Alfred Hitchcock, Marilyn Monroe, Cate Blanchett, and, rather amusingly, Godzilla. The Scottish actor, now the face of the US version of The Traitors, paused for a chat just before the ceremony, taking stock of a career that’s been anything but predictable.
“It’s something so out of my expected career path or even my mental periphery. I am so grateful and kind of shocked by it. But it really has made me take stock and realise what an incredible journey I’ve had and how much I was helped by so many people in Hollywood and in America.”
At 60, Cumming invited a rather eclectic group to witness the occasion: fellow Scot and Succession star Brian Cox, Monica Lewinsky, TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney, and his husband Grant Shaffer. He mused,
“As you get older, you realise that you are a product of everything that’s happened to you: I owe so much to being Scottish in terms of my training and the opportunities I was given, and then coming to America and having this incredible new range of opportunities has allowed me to live in an incredible way that I never thought was possible.”
Back in Blue: Nightcrawler Returns
December will see Cumming donning the blue makeup once more, reprising his role as Nightcrawler in the much-discussed Avengers: Doomsday. His first outing as the teleporting mutant came in 2003’s X-Men 2, which opened with a memorable White House sequence that’s still talked about by fans. Until now, that was his only turn as the arrow-tailed antihero.
He’s admitted that the news of his return came as a bit of a jolt, especially since a younger version of the character was later played by Kodi Smit-McPhee in the prequels.
“It’s interesting because that was one of the films that was not a great experience at all to make — and ended up being a really great film. I had a miserable time making it. All of us did. It’s not finished yet, but it feels healing to go back to something that wasn’t the greatest experience and enjoy yourself,”
Cumming shared.
“I realised that after X-Men, I stopped doing those kinds of bigger, blockbuster-type films. I purposely went away from that big machine because I didn’t want to be an unhappy cog.”
Old Friends and New Faces
He won’t be the only familiar face returning for Doomsday. Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Rebecca Romijn, and James Marsden are all set to reprise their roles from the X2 days. The rest of the cast reads like a who’s who of modern cinema: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Pedro Pascal, Florence Pugh, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Chris Hemsworth, Channing Tatum, Simu Liu, Paul Rudd, Lewis Pullman, and Sebastian Stan, with more names likely to be revealed as the release approaches.
For Cumming, the chance to revisit a character he once left behind—this time with a sense of enjoyment rather than obligation—marks a curious new chapter in a career that’s never followed a straight line. The Walk of Fame plaque may be set in stone, but it seems the journey is far from over.