Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age

What exactly is acting your age? And who decides? These are the questions Alan Cumming has been grappling with for a very long time.

‘I’m constantly told, even now in my sixth decade, that I am childlike or puckish, and yet at the same time I’m also called a silver fox and a daddy,’ he says. ‘I think we all get really mixed messages about ageing. We’re told to worship at the fountain of youth, to do everything we can to our bodies and our minds to stay young, yet we bandy around pejoratives like “grow up” or “act your age”, even that we’re “mutton dressed as lamb”.’

Cumming, at fifty-six, is enjoying himself. ‘I feel I’m still at an age where I can dance till dawn, but also be able to dole out some wisdom to my fellow revelers! Wisdom is just being able to recognize the repeating patterns that emerge as you get older and maybe deciding to react to them differently. It’s just the same show with different costumes.’

In Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age, he covers all the bases: sex, death and bacchanalia, with a set list as eclectic as the man himself. Songs from Cabaret authors John Kander and Fred Ebb blend with contemporary favorites and even a self-penned paean against plastic surgery. ‘I am literally the only person on American TV who has not had Botox!’ he quips. He also discusses the effects of gravity, the time the mum from The Brady Bunch punched him in the stomach and what his dog taught him about the quality of life.