Alan Cumming knows how to take a risk when choosing his projects.
Instead of taking it easy on his breaks from appearing on CBS’ hit drama, The Good Wife, Cumming uses his time to take on demanding projects, like the new film, Any Day Now.
“I was on summer holiday from The Good Wife. I always seem to do the most crazy challenging things on my break,” the Scottish actor said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “Last summer I decided to play all the parts in Macbeth. The summer before that I did this film. Maybe next summer I am just going to have a real holiday.”
In Any Day Now, Cumming portrays a drag-queen performer in the ‘70s who tries to fight the legal system in order to adopt a teen with Down Syndrome. “I obviously play people all the time who are very different from me, but to go into this with such little preparation—I don’t know what somebody from America in the 1970s went through—but you just dive in and connect in a gut way. I understood all the things he was feeling.”
“When we showed it at Out Fest, an ex-girlfriend of mine said ‘I’ve never seen a film when so much of you comes out.’ That’s something I’ve been trying to do in my career—let people see you even when you’re not being you. So there’s lots of me in this.”
Another challenge for the actor was perfecting a Queens accent for his character. “I’ve never done a whole film when I had to have that accent. I remember when I did Annie with Kathy Bates, I would say [in Queens accent] ‘Hey sis, who’s the hot tomato in the fancy car?’ I based that on my friend Carmine. But this was being so real. It’s easier to do when it’s a little cartoony. But this was a real person. It was much harder. I watched some films and things. The Internet is great. You can get really detailed audio. I was a little magpie.”
The film, already receiving Oscar buzz, will be released on Friday, December 14.
