13. The High Life Alan Cumming
I've watched Alan Cumming for years. He was always a great guest on talk shows in the UK, but internationally his breakthrough role has to be as Nightcrawler in X-Men II. Sure he'd been in a bunch of comedy films before that, such as Romy and Michele's High School Adventure and of course is role in the Spy Kids franchise, but the X-Men made him really well known to comic book fans. Because not only was he Nightcrawler a fairly popular character but that intro sequence was utterly kick ass. Still is, even compared to all the comic book films that have come out since. So what is the High Life, you ask? Well, I doubt it was ever on American television. I watched it back in the days when you could always rely on a couple of nights of comedy on BBC2 from 9pm onwards. It lasted for six episodes (you know, that standard season length in the UK for comedies), which was in only a single season. It followed the adventures of an Air Scotia Cabin Crew. Cumming played the role super camp, and he's barely recognisable if you looked at him in The Good Wife these days. Cumming didn't just appear as one of the main two cast members but wrote it alongside his fellow co-star, Forbes Masson. While Cumming broke the states, Masson didn't his longest credit is 21 episodes of Eastenders. I'd like to try to explain The High Life, but frankly it was an extremely camp series... which was pretty cheesy. Mind you, I still to this day remember that theme tune... Somehow after The High Life, Cumming managed to land the role of Boris Grishenko in GoldenEye. He gradually gained more and more roles in the states and in films. Right now he's appearing in Web Therapy and The Good Wife he has been nominated twice for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series in the latter and to me remains one of the stand out cast members in the series. But to consider that somehow The High Life generated anyone who because successful in Hollywood is nuts to say the least. http://youtu.be/p6Eaz-1_3iA
Brian Chapman
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I'm a pop culture addict. Television, cinema, comics, games - you name it, and I've done it. Or at least read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia.
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