Alan Cumming – a man for all seasons

The versatile Alan Cumming has added yet another award from the recent Emmys to join his previous BAFTA Award, previous Emmy, Tonys and an Olivier. This recent accolade was for his hosting of the reality show Traitors, which is a tense psychological adventure competition where 22 strangers in a castle in the Scottish Highlands aim to complete a series of challenges as a team. Though within their ranks are three traitors secretly sabotaging their efforts.

 His career has had an extraordinary range from light-hearted comedy and musicals to heavy drama and Shakespeare in theatre and on Broadway, with a string of well-received movies and television series where he is best known for The Good Wife. He also sings, writes drama and has published several books including two memoirs – Not My Father’s Son and Baggage: Tales from a Fully Packed Life. A presenter, screenwriter, producer, director, cabaret performer, novelist and gay-rights campaigner.

  He was born 27 January 1965 8.20 am Aberfeldy, Scotland, with a tyrannical and abusive father, head forester on a Scottish estate, who did not believe he or his brother were his sons. Though a DNA test in recent years proved they were. He said that his difficult childhood taught him how to act by “needing to suppress my own emotions and feelings around him [his father] when I was a little boy”.

  What pulled him out of the damaging effects of a “feudal” childhood were firstly an upfront and boisterous Aquarius Sun is on his Ascendant giving him a bouncy, chatty image with his Sun in an optimistic and enthusiastic square to a communicative Jupiter in the 3^rd house in money-magnet Taurus. He also has a look-on-the-bright-side Sagittarius Moon exactly on his Midheaven suiting him for a colourful and wide ranging public career.

 He does have Uranus Pluto and Mars in Virgo all in his 8^th house suggesting a challenging psychological inheritance from previous generations, controlling and angry. Luckily his Uranus Pluto sits in a practical, business-building Earth Grand Trine to Jupiter and to Venus Mercury in Capricorn in his 12^th, formed into a Kite with Jupiter opposition Neptune – giving him talent, a practical approach to life and enough dreams from Jupiter Neptune to carry him away from his abusive childhood.

  For all his outer success he has not had it easy emotionally with a hidden Venus and a Moon square Saturn, a legacy from his early home life where his mother was unable to give him what he needed since she was as trapped as her children were.  

  His creative 5^th Harmonic is strong; and his victim 12^th even more so. What is intriguing is his 13^th Harmonic which is confident, enthusiastic, exuberant. That is the one which indicates “Upheaval, change and rebirth. Breaking with the orthodox. It requires adaptation to change to be successful.” Peter Sellers, the comedian had a strong 13^th harmonic giving him an ability like Alan Cumming to inhabit a variety of dramatic characters with authenticity.  

His 8^th house Mars in late Virgo is catching this week’s Lunar Eclipse revving up his engine and putting him into overdrive which will continue on throughout 2025 with the following eclipses at similar degree. He may need to keep himself in check or he’ll overdo the running around.