Actor Alan Cumming tells of Hollywood secrets - and how it all started at Granada Television
Alan Cumming has been telling entertainment correspondent Caroline Whitmore about his new memoir and how his incredible career started at Granada Television.
You may recognise Alan Cumming from the Emmy award-winning series The Good Wife or superhero franchise The X-Men.
But the Scottish actor has revealed the film he personally loved to work on the most was something a little less high profile.
"Spice World was my favourite film, I had such fun!", he told ITV Granada Reports Entertainment Correspondent Caroline Whitmore.
He popped in to the studio to talk about professional acting, the messiness of life and how every experience shapes who you are - all featured in his new book 'Baggage'.
Alan has had a varied career over the last 40 years - performing with Liza Minelli, making films with Stanley Kubrick, playing God, the Devil, the Pope and a teleporting superhero, as well as a playing a Smurf (twice).
He also took on the iconic role of James Bond baddie Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye, something he said almost didn't happen as the audition took place on the 'worst day of his life.'
"I was getting divorced, I was having these flashbacks of my childhood - basically, in the middle of a nervous breakdown."
Every career has to start somewhere and Alan's started in the North West.
He got his first on-screen role at Granada Television in 1984 when he played a boy called Jamie, in The Travelling Man. He worked alongside actor and director Leigh Lawson.
"That was my very first job in TV", he said. "I was terrible!"
Alan was recently awarded an honorary doctorate, from The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, for his career on the stage and screen and his work for equality and human rights.
His new memoir, Baggage, is a follow up to 2014′s Not My Father's Son which reveals the abuse he suffered from his father as a young man.
Alan will talk about his new book at the Lowry Threatre in Salford in 1 November with local drag queen Cheddar Gorgeous.
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