In his book baggage Alan Cumming recounts the highs and lows of his career as an actor and at one point talks about when he trained to be an actor he was asked to perform not in his own Scottish accent but the required RP – received pronunciation – also known as talking posh.
Therefore, his Scottish voice and by extension a major aspect of his authentic self was not a priority in his training and so he grew to view his voice as unimportant.
But later on in his performing career he began to play in his own voice which was seen as radical at the time, especially when it came to playing Hamlet on stage. Even the Donmar warehouse which were putting on the bards show were concerned that the audience might not understand all of Shakespeares lines and an accompanying cartoon had Alan holding the skull and saying ‘Alas poor Yorick, see you jimmy!’
A Scottish voice meant uneducated, ill mannered and unintelligible.
Alan was also once asked to audition for a big Hollywood movie ‘The young Sherlock Holmes’ and his agent warned him that as soon as he walked into the room he would have to pretend to be English. And there was no negotiation. But after the audition Alan felt like a fraud with no authenticity, no connection and no personality. An accent with no backstory and he didn’t get the part.
He recalls that there were so few role models back then of successful Scots who didn’t succumb to the Anglo-fication factor and become practically English. One exception was Billy Connolly who cared less about tanning down neither his material nor his presentation of its utter Scottishness when he was performing in the UK.
It was inspiring for Alan plus a little confusing to see an out and proud Scot be accepted and loved for the very thing they’d been encouraged to believe could be their downfall.
Years later he was asked to present Billy Connelly with a great Scot award and was also able to tell him just how important it had been to see Billy never compromise his own voice and authenticity, but instead brandish it as a badge of honour.
Communicating and connecting with people from other cultures has little to do with clarity of accent. Humour is a universal language. Emotion is a universal language and the stronger a person’s spirit the deeper and more profoundly they connect with an audience no matter who or where it is.
So, for those of you out there with a foreign or weird accent – embrace it and don’t let that get in your way of finding your true voice when it comes to acting either on stage or on screen.