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Earlier this year, Alan took a career sharp right turn. He was clothed, condescending, and ultra conservative as a moralizing lecturer who travels from town to town preaching about the evils of marijuana in Showtime’s motion picture musical Reefer Madness. In Reefer, Alan left the nudity and depravity to the traditionally sexy Christian Campbell, Neve’s pistol-hot brother.

If Cumming was self-righteous and square in Reefer, then his current role will redeem his sexy, hipster image with a vengeance.

In six episodes of The L Word’s third season, now in production, the actor returns to his satyr-like ways. In the series, Showtime’s Sapphic response to their landmark Queer as Folk, Alan is Billie Blaikie, a party promoter, sex junkie, and the former star of the New York underground drag club scene. (Sure, Billie takes Dolls! Even he has to get some sleep!)

But the character is not all about parties, pill popping, and sex. Billie has business savvy, and that’s why he’s the new manager of the Planet restaurant/nightclub owned in the series by Kit Porter (Pam Grier). As Billie, Alan Cumming will bring the “B Syndrome” (bisexual) to The L Word.

Comfortable with nudity, his sex symbol status, and his renowned bisexuality, Alan Cumming bristles when someone tries to pigeonhole him as simply gay.

In 2000, he vented to the London Sunday Herald: “People would start interviews with ‘Are you gay?’ These are supposedly serious journalists for quality magazines and newspapers. I would answer, ‘Why? Do you fancy me?’ It was that or just say ‘Fuck off!’ I think there’s a bit more to me because of my work or whatever, not just because someone in their office wants to know if I was shaggable.”

Nicknamed Uppin Cumming, the 40-year-old divorcee has always lived on the edgy side of the street. If his sexual appetite is as much for wood, as it is for sugar and spice, then who can be surprised? This son of a forester and a secretary was born January 27, 1965, in Aberfeldy, Pertshire Scotland, UK. Alan’s early years were spent on a country estate.

While Cumming’s classmates played rugby and bicycled, Alan spent his playtime pretending to be James Bond. At 16, Alan stopped pretending to be an Ian Fleming uber spy. He left school and took a writing job with Tops, an entertainment magazine. Not long after, he was accepted to Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. He excelled at both. During his final year at the Royal Scottish Academy, he made his feature film debut in Passing Glory (1986). The film passed without glory, but not so Alan’s acting career.

At the academy, he first met his future wife, actress Hilary Lyons. Alan and Hilary were married from 1985-1993. Co-starring with Hilary in Hamlet, the British press began referring to them as ”the new Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.” Of his marriage, the actor has said, “I thought it would last forever.”

Alan has spoken publicly about having relationships with men before his marriage. Following the divorce, he simply picked up where he had left off before Hilary, although his first relationship after the divorce was not with a man, but with his Circle of Friends co-star, the openly bisexual Saffron Burrow.

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