Alan Cumming may be the campest thing to come out of Scotland since the Bay City Rollers. His varied CV includes roles in "Spice World: The Movie", "GoldenEye", "Spy Kids", and "Josie and the Pussycats". Now he's mutated into Nightcrawler on "X-Men 2".
This film has a lot more depth compared to other comic book movies...
The thing about Bryan Singer is that he is very passionate about the characters. What I liked about the script was that the characters are all very well defined. And the fact that they are outcasts and, in addition to their powers, are struggling to varying degrees with what it feels like to be prejudiced against. So that is why I think it works and why it has worked for a long, long time. It is not hard to feel like an outsider. I think we have all felt like that at one time or another.
I think the X-Men comics came at the time of the civil rights movement starting in America. I hadn't read any of the comics, and when I read the script I was a bit sniffy about it. But I was surprised, because you don't expect to get characters of this depth in any Hollywood film, let alone a comic book superhero one.
There is a large main cast. How did you all get along on set?
It was a long shoot, much longer than normal. So you want to make friends more. Sometimes you just go in, do it and leave it. With this you were there for months and months, so it was great to have Ian [McKellen] as our social secretary.
How did you find the makeup for your character?
I underestimated how gruelling the schedule would be. Getting up at two in the morning for makeup before everyone else arrived for work made me very bitter as well as exhausted. I didn't have it as bad as Rebecca [Romijn-Stamos]. I just had the tattoo things. The spray was a nightmare. I had funny things happening to my face. Contact lenses are hard because you can't see.
Did you have to do much physical training?
Before the film started, they sent me to the gym to get strong. Then I worked with this acrobat and he helped me find a movement for Nightcrawler so we could have a movement that worked with how he looked. So it was a lot of physical stuff.
What was it like to have the Brit base on set?
It was nice, especially with Ian and Patrick [Stewart]. It was nice to hear them talking about the theatre. You don't expect, in big Hollywood movies, that you get to hang around with British luvvies. Ian really provided a social centre. Everybody hung out together, it was a good feeling.
