Alan Cumming: 'I’m very lucky to be from Scotland – I share its values'

He laughs on the Zoom call. “Well, rather than flying I think I’m sort of falling through life. But I love the image. It asks ‘What is going on? Is he levitating, is he dropping?’ And in a way, that is my life. It’s both of those things.”

The life of Alan Cumming is again explored in his new (second) autobiography, Baggage. And there was a wonder where he would go with it. The first, Not My Father’s Son (2014), took a cemetery shovel to dig up the relationship he had with his late father. It was an immensely sad story of abuse by a dad who barely tolerated either of his two boys.

This time around, Cumming tells of his career and personal adventures. And while it’s a sometime dark but very often funny clutch of stories, perhaps what gives it a real edge is its unbridled honesty. He certainly dissuades the reader from thinking this boy’s life, professionally or personally, has been continually magical.

Was the point of the book to suggest that none of us is really in charge? “Absolutely,” he agrees. “I think what I’m doing is standing back and marvelling at what’s happened to me. And I realise it’s not a normal life. There have been real challenges.

“Plus, I didn’t want people to think that having read the first book that I had triumphed. Life isn’t like that. It’s like when you get divorced, for example. (He was married to actor Hilary Lyon, whom he met at drama college). Nobody wins. We are talking about the death of something.”

Cumming is prepared to take us behind the film screen to reveal the Wizard of Oz-like artifice, a world which suggest fun and lightness, but in fact can be utterly depressing.

In filming X-Men 2 (2003) for example, he played Nightcrawler, a blue teleporting mutant. So far, so much fun. But the filming experience proved to be traumatic. Director Bryan Singer was, by some accounts, a drug-addled wreck, who would go on to face a series of sexual abuse allegations, although there was not enough evidence to see the multi-millionaire director charged with any offences.

As a result of Singer’s mood swings, Cumming had to cope with months of tightrope-walking unpredictability, (figuratively) getting up at 2am for example, to begin filming, only to find himself hanging by flying wires (literally) on set for hours on end, and then being told the director wasn’t going to show up.

The Scot even reveals he was expected to remain in blue make-up all day long, (in case the director deigned to appear) and then sleep in it, to be ready for the next day. “I said ‘What if I want to have sex?’ I thought ‘I am so over this f****** movie!’ I cried to the heavens.’”

He cried a few rivers too while filming the dark and intense For My Baby in 1997, (he played a stand-up comedian who has to contend with a Holocaust-ravaged past and a dead sister who refuses to die), boarded at the Hotel Astoria in Budapest, a former Nazi hotel. During this time, the actor was having an ill-judged affair. “My character’s haunting was commingling with my own state of despondency about the crumbling mass that was my life.”

This isn’t to say Cumming hasn’t had some great experiences while making movies. He loved his stint in Ireland filming Circle of Friends (1995), with Minnie Driver and Chris O’Donnell. Yet, after filming he’d return to a dark bedsit in Primrose Hill.

And while an actor’s life is peripatetic, all about meeting new friends, what happens when you move on to the next job? During the 1997 film, Buddy, Cumming fell in love. With a monkey. He gushes about his relationship with Tonka the chimpanzee. “It was that indefinable combo of a crush, a bestie and a soul mate that I have only experienced with beings I have either had torrid affairs with, married or been an owner to.” He and Tonka had to go their separate ways, of course. And the biography reveals the sad fate of the chimp.

Cumming runs hard and often on the theme of the duality of existence, what the professional suggests and what the reality entails. Theatre too can terrific, he says. His performance in The Bacchae in 2007 was sensational. His 2012 Macbeth a tour de force. And his MC in Cabaret in New York won him a Tony award.

Yet, behind the curtain . . . “Yes, theatre can be wonderful. You walk on stage, and you create an image, a veneer. But then you go off and go backstage and there’s a bucket of water dripping, and you’re eating a stale sandwich while sitting in your jockstrap.”

Alan Cumming’s life is certainly not a Norma Desmond story re-make; however, he grins as he points out that it can’t be all glamour and glitter either. “You go to a premiere, and you’re all dressed up and the hair’s done and you’re looking gorgeous, and people take pics and are screaming,” he says in heightened voice. “But you then wonder ‘Do you think this is my life every day? Do you think I go to the supermarket looking like this?’ The reality is I’m walking the dog and picking up poop.”

He laughs hard. “We all present a facade in life, like when we get dressed up to go to a wedding. And yes, it’s great fun to glam up to go to a premiere. But not every day. And it’s not what my life is about.”

His personal life, he says, also underlines duality. In 1994, after eight years of marriage, he was attracting incredible reviews for his powerful, commanding Hamlet. Yet, offstage the one-time half of cabaret duo Victor and Barry (with Forbes Masson) was an anorexic on the verge of a nervous breakdown working in a play that evoked memories of his father. Meantime, he was deeply upset at not having realised his dream of becoming a father. (He and Hilary tried for some time.)

And after the marriage ended, the actor embarked in long(ish) relationships, with the likes of actor Saffron Burrows, and had lots of sexual adventuring with men. But in retrospect, the bisexual actor admits he wasn’t always in control. He was once the ‘young flesh’ that was being ‘used and abused.’ Was the carousel going a little too fast for you, Alan? “Yes. Looking back doesn’t invalidate the experience you have at the time, but it certainly gives you a different perspective gained from wisdom.”

Yet, while it’s undeniable that parts of Alan Cumming’s life have been eye-liner black, that’s not to say he hasn’t been determined to continually move forward. Growing up the son of a forester in Aberfeldy, on leaving school young Alan joined publisher’s DC Thomson (he was a promising writer and editor). But while modelling for some of the Jackie Magazine’s photo-stories, he knew instinctively he should be playing other characters in theatre or film. To fulfil the acting dream, he took off to Glasgow’s RSAMD. And before leaving drama college, the precocious talent had already worked in television, film and theatre.

Does he think adversity may have been a prompter, growing up with a need to prove his father wrong perhaps? “I don’t know.” He pauses and re-thinks. “No, I don’t think it’s that. I’m also slight leery of this notion that having a difficult childhood can contribute to a need to be successful. Lots of people have lovely childhoods and go on to do lots of exciting things. I think it’s more about having this zest to push yourself.”

At 57, Cumming has revealed more zest than a Californian orange grove. He loves to defy expectations. The Scot’s one-man Macbeth, for example was bold and stunning. Yet, he maintains –while sustaining a straight face – his greatest film appearance was the role of the manager in the Spice Girls movie.

Seriously, Alan? He laughs. “Well, part of the reason for saying that was to confound intellectual snobbery, but for me the experience of making a film is far more important than how it turns out, or is perceived, or how it performs at the box office.”

He knows that if you make great leaps in life, you just might come up short. That’s why his upcoming stint in Burn, the Rabbie Burns life story played out in dance theatre form, is terrifying him. “It’s insane that I’m doing this,” he declares, grinning. “But it’s also exciting.” He muses; “I was doing this podcast thing with [punk poet, musician] Patti Smith and we were talking about why some artists need to challenge themselves to the point of potential failure. Yes, it’s about running a marathon, but why did I lose practically a stone during Macbeth? I know it turned out quite well, but I wonder why?”

What’s the answer, Alan? “I don’t know,” he says, laughing. “I guess it’s something to do with feeling galvanised when facing this huge challenge. You want to do it all.” And Patti Smith’s perspective? He laughs: “When I asked about pushing ourselves to the point of failure she said, ‘But Alan, if you do your very best then it won’t be a failure,’ which is very homespun and nice and the sort of thing my mum would say.” He chuckles. “In fact, I never realised my mum and Patti Smith have so much in common.”

Alan Cumming hasn’t done it all, although we can be forgiven for thinking he has, with a career in which he’s played horses, popes, the Devil and God, and a Bond villain, to name but a few. And he hasn’t always gone all out for the left-of-top roles. He fought like a devil to land a very small part in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. (No, Tom Cruise didn’t register on his gaydar.)

Yet do you ever feel you’re playing the role of Alan Cumming? “Yes, and you have to be able to perform the role of Alan Cumming in order to be you,” he admits. “I still do that. I feel that in order to have your own life, while at the same time go out and have everyone look at you, you have to be able to draw boundaries. Today, I’m Alan Cumming. Today, I’ll stop and chat. But on another day, it won’t always be appropriate.”

What of the duality of his cultural commitment? The actor has homes in New York, and in Scotland near where he grew up. Yet, he seems to be spending more time in Scotland? “Yes, that’s why I’m doing this piece about Burns, it’s about what it means to be Scottish. It’s part of my genetic heritage and you become more in tune with that. And I’m very lucky in that the country where I’m from, where I could live, has the same values that I adhere to.”

So, will he come back for good? “Well, if Trump gets in again, I’m gone. I still worry about that. Living in New York is a different bubble, and it’s great, but I do love to be in Scotland where I have so much in common with me.”

He smiles. “Just last month I was filming in Inverness, and I had this real familiarity with people, and the understanding that we’re from the same place.” And they quite like you as well. On a good day? “Yes, on a good day,” he says laughing, clearly enjoying many good days these days.

It’s fair to say Alan Cumming’s leaps of faith have paid off. He has certainly written a very good second memoir. However, if he had carried on at DC Thomson, he could have been editor of the Beano by now? But no, you chose to go off and play pretendy, Alan. “Yes, you’re right,” he says, smiling. “Maybe I could have made it at the Beano.”

What’s obvious is that while life isn’t always a cabaret for Alan Cumming, his career and personal life (he’s been married to illustrator Grant Schaffer since 2007) has certainly played out well. “Well, maybe. But anything could happen to me.”

He adds in cautionary voice. “I could fall apart. You know, I had flirted with the idea of suicide at one time, although it wasn’t that I wanted my life to end, but my circumstances.” He breaks into a grin that’s about as wide as the works of Burns. “That’s why I take each day as a prize.”

So you’re actually floating upwards, Alan? “Levitating,” he says, laughing, clearly anxious not to tempt fate.

• Baggage: Tales from A Fully Packed Life, is published in paperback by Canongate, £9.99.

• Burn, a National Theatre of Scotland production, will tour Scotland, opening at the King’s Theatre, Edinburgh as part of the Edinburgh International Festival with performances from August 4 - 10 appearing at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, August 31-September 3.