Good Wife star Alan: Why I feared tyrant father would kill me
ACTOR Alan Cumming has revealed that he feared he would be killed by his ‘tyrant’ father.
The 57-year-old star, best known for his role as political aide Eli Gold in US drama The Good Wife, tells today’s edition of Desert Island Discs: ‘Sometimes I had terror for my life – when you think, “Oh my God, I am going to die here.”’
The actor, who has appeared in the X-Men franchise, also reveals how his violent father Alex seemed to take ‘great pleasure’ in hurting him and at one point insisted he was not his father. ‘My dad was very violent to us, very violent. He was out of control,’ he says. ‘He didn’t care what my mum thought or my brother and I. He was very abusive, mentally, emotionally, and very physically to me and my brother.’
Speaking about being ‘constantly on edge’, Scots-born Cumming says his father, who worked as a forester on a country estate, was ‘obsessed with my hair’. ‘It would start off sort of like, you know, you need a haircut.
‘It would go from that to him dragging me by the collar outside into a shed, getting sheep shears out of a drawer and just shearing my head. I mean, just insane – he seemed to get great pleasure from hurting me.
‘When I’d go to get my hair cut as an adult, I would vomit.’ Subsequent attempts at a reconciliation failed and, in 2010, Cumming senior – who was dying of cancer – insisted he was not the star’s father.
But the actor, who proved the claims to be false, thinks his father may have believed the story. He says: ‘I eventually had this DNA test because I didn’t believe him. I had then to phone up my dad and tell him and disappoint him that I was his son…
‘I told him I thought he was a coward because I had been the one to go and find out the truth and he had used a fallacy he had believed as a justification to abuse me all these years.’
He recalls ending the call by saying to his father: ‘I actually won’t talk to you again, but take care.’
Desert Island Discs is on BBC Radio 4 today at 11am and will be repeated at 9am on Friday.