He’s happiest when living off the wall

After only a few minutes with Alan Cumming, it’s hard to resist falling under his spell. He comes across as witty, bright and engaging. Behind his impish grin lies an offbeat, often naughty vision of the world. His Scottish brogue is as thick as a brick. And unlike a lot of actors, he doesn’t seem to give a hoot what anybody thinks about what he says.

“I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t hit it off with Alan,” says writer-director Doug McGrath, who has cast the 38-year-old actor in three films, including “Emma” and “Nicholas Nickleby.” “He has a very infectious, joie de vivre. He gets the maximum amount of enjoyment out of life. It’s much more delightful to be with that kind of a person than with someone who is getting the maximum amount of irritation out of life.”

Sporting gray, wide-legged trousers and a tank top that reads “Stud: San Francisco,” Cumming is sprawled in a straight-back chair in his hotel suite at the Four Seasons, chatting up his latest movie project, “X2: X-Men United,” the sequel to the 2000 blockbuster based on the popular Marvel Comics series. Cumming plays a blue-skinned mutant called the Nightcrawler who has the ability to teleport himself in and out of rooms.

The Nightcrawler, whose real name is Kurt Wagner, also looks like a devil, albeit a devil in blue skin, complete with a tail, cloven hoofs, pointy ears and carnivorously sharp teeth. Despite his initially menacing appearance -- a drug put him under someone else’s control -- Kurt is actually an angelic, sweet creature who is very religious, constantly fingering rosary beads, praying and even citing scripture.

Lighting a cigarette, Cumming explains that he took the part for a number of reasons. “I will tell you the most altruistic one,” he says, smiling. “I had never read the comics and I didn’t see the first film. When I read it, it was a surprise to me. I really liked the message in the film that we need to be more tolerant and understanding of other cultures different than ours and not to think because they are different they are bad. I thought it was amazing and unexpected. I also liked the surprisingness of my character. When he’s not being injected to do bad things, he’s quite sensitive. And I liked flying through the air and killing people.”

He describes himself as the “Cute Mute” of the film. He has nicknamed his equally blue-skinned co-star Rebecca Romijin-Stamos, the “Beaut Mute” and Hugh Jackman, who plays Wolverine, is the “Brute Mute.”

‘Charming sensitivity’

Director Bryan Singer pursued Cumming, having seen him in several movies, but what particularly impressed Singer was his Tony Award-winning role as the Emcee in Sam Mendes’ Broadway revival of the musical “Cabaret.”

“At first he was not available,” says Singer. “Then closer toward production he became available and we got him.” Singer thought he would be the perfect Nightcrawler because Cumming has a “charming sensitivity and a sense of humor but a kind of wicked side and a personality and a presence that would emerge even behind the makeup. What is most interesting about his character is that actually he has come to a place of faith and acceptance of what he is and yet by his history, the journey to get there was a difficult one.”

As much as Cumming enjoyed his character, he didn’t enjoy the 10 hours it took to get into makeup and devil tail. He had three different types of tails in the film -- a “really boingy-boingy one, a more swishy one and a more flaccid one.”

The first time he wore the “boingy-boingy” one, Cumming hit himself in the face.

“Once or twice, he knocked me in the head,” says Singer. “I even took all the sandwiches off the table at one time,” Cumming adds, laughing.

It also made him uncomfortable, when people on the set stared at him in his Nightcrawler get-up. “ “When you have people in your face four or five hours to do the makeup and then you have people stare at you ... obviously you are polite, but you want to say, ‘Go. Go away.’ ”

Both Singer and McGrath say Cumming is easy to direct because he lacks pretension.

“He just tries his hardest to give you what you need,” says McGrath. “Because he is so intelligent you can just have an easy, frank discussion with him about it. Because he is a writer himself and because he is a director himself, he knows what is needed, and because he is such a chameleon in many ways he can give it to you. There are other actors around who need a discussion about motivation and he’s very impatient with that.”

On his Web site -- www.alancumming.com -- Cumming confides that his favorite movie is “Waiting for Guffman,” Christopher Guest’s 1997 mockumentary about a small-town theater in the hinterlands putting on a musical revue in hopes of bringing it to Broadway.

“I watch it regularly,” Cumming says. “Have you seen the DVD? There is an extra song on it, ‘Bulging River.’ I saw it just after I moved to America to do ‘Cabaret’ and one of the boys in the show showed it to me one night.

“It really taught me a lot about America because my experience of America had been Los Angeles and New York, and that is a very limited picture. So it taught me about how aspirational America is and how everyone is positive.”

Last year, Cumming published his first novel, “Tommy’s Tale,” which he will soon adapt for the screen. Two years ago, he and Jennifer Jason Leigh co-wrote, directed and appeared in the indie film “The Anniversary Party,” and he’s slated to write and direct two movies for a small British company.

Cumming also keeps his hand in theater. Last year, he and his ex-partner, Nick Philippou, created the Art Party theater company in New York. Their first production was Jean Genet’s drama “Elle,” which Cumming adapted and starred in. Their next project will be Jean Cocteau’s “The Human Voice,” which Cumming hopes will be mounted in the fall. The group also holds readings and conducts salons to bring people from different artistic fields together. “We say, ‘be part of the party, be a member of the party.’ ”

Lighting another cigarette, Cumming confesses he wants to do more experimental theater. So he continues to do big films like “X2” and “Spy Kids,” so he can finance his more offbeat projects.

“I have this thing I call the Hollywood bank,” he says. “You have to make deposits sometimes so you can make withdrawals so I can do little films or write a play.” And “X2,” he says, was a “big” deposit.

Cumming also hopes to make some nice change if his prospective TV series, “Mr. and Mr. Nash,” makes the ABC midseason lineup next year. Produced by Steve Martin’s company, the series is described as a gay “Hart to Hart.”

“It’s two interior designers and there are corpses everywhere. It’s funny and witty and kind of groundbreaking because it will be the first program on American network TV that has gay characters and their gayness is secondary to what the show is about.”

Who will play the other Mr. Nash?

Cumming pauses and takes a drag on his cigarette. “I don’t know yet,” he says wryly. “It’s going to be an extensive casting couch session.”