When you see patterns of your own behavior and of others, and then you decide to make a.
You think, oh, this is the situation again.
Here's what I did last time.
Oh, look what happened.
Maybe I'll do something else this time.
That's wisdom.
And I realized that I had walked away from an awful lot of things in my life.
And then I realized that I wanted to walk towards something.
It's just a mental shift, but it changed so much for me.
So surviving what he describes as a.
Tormented childhood riddled with abuse, Alan Cumming turned to acting before he even really knew what acting was, as a way to step out of the world he inhabited and into one of his own creation, one that was safe, where he made the rules.
And that impulse eventually led him to leave home to study drama in Glasgow and, in his words, tumble into a career that, from the outside in, has appeared as this endless stream of successes.
He's performed with everyone from Jay Z to Liza Minnelli, won countless theatrical awards, made back to back films with people like Stanley Kubrick and even the Spice Girls.
Played God, the devil, Hitler, a pope, a teleporting super hero, Hamlet, all parts in Macbeth, general Batista of Cuba, a goat opposite Sean Connery, and a political spinmeister, Eli Gold.
On seven seasons of the good life, he's also owned the stage and invited people to really re examine their beliefs, identity, sexuality and sense of power, propriety and openness in the role of the MC in cabaret, which he took on three times over 22 years in London and on Broadway.
He's the author of five books, including a number one New York Times bestselling memoir, and played the first ever gay leading role on a us network drama, CBS's Instinct.
And Alan was made an officer of the British Empire for his contributions to the arts and lgbt equality by the queen, and has had a love affair with New York City for nearly three decades, where he lives with his husband and just for fun, also happens to own a bar.
So what sounds like this near magical.
Life on stages, though on television, on big screen, has also seen its share of profound pain, loss, grief, existential struggle, and eventually a series of reckonings and awakenings to who and what matters and a certain reclamation of joy and of life.
And now in his fifties, Ellen reflects on these moments along this journey in his new book, Baggage, and we dive into it all, along with his take on current culture in this conversation.