Alan Down Under

I am writing this from the South Island of New Zealand, having a few days of delicious downtime between the Auckland Writers' Festival (which was a blast) and the Sydney Writers' Festival (which I am very much looking forward to). It's been a while since I have been to Sydney and am looking forward to catching up with friends, and of course, watching the Eurovision Song Contest next Sunday with a bunch of Aussies celebrating their country's first time competing in this illustrious institution!

What's been going down this week...

The lovely Sienna Miller joined the cast of Cabaret as Sally Bowles. Wilkommen!

 

I have started writing a column for the Globe and Mail newspaper in Canada, and you can read my first one, about turning fifty, here

 

Here's a wee PSA I made to highlight the bigoted and totally stupid blood ban that exists for gay and bisexual men here in the USA. Unfortunately, the situation is similar in many other countries too, including my homeland of Scotland

 

Also I was interviewed by the lovely and talented Jeffrey Self for his podcast, This Is Really Important, and you can listen to it here

I attended the Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary bash this past weekend. I hosted the show in 2000! It was a great, surreal evening. And oh yes, I'm wearing Calvin Klein.


And finally I interviewed my dearest chum and former fiance, Saffron Burrows, for Interview magazine and you can read it here

What I've been up to...

Drama League Awards

I attended the Drama League awards in NYC, and gave an award to Mark Saks, the casting director of The Good Wife.

And here is the latest commercial for Cabaret, which ends, like, forever, never coming back, on March 29th...

And here's some fun snaps from Club Cumming...

Evan Rachel Wood and I star in George Lucas' new animated movie, Strange Magic,

and here we are talking about it...

And Whitney Cummings guest hosted the Late Late Show and I went on and said hello...

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Portrait of me by Christian Hook

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I am truly honoured to tell you the above portrait of me by Christian Hook was recently unveiled at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh.

Christian won the Portrait Artist of the Year award, and the competition was filmed by Sky Arts and shown in the UK, including the final episode when I went to Edinburgh for the unveiling. It is a huge honour to be in the SNPG,. especially painted by someone I admire so much, and someone with whom I got to know and collaborated with.  I am wearing a kilt that is made of the official YES Campaign for Independence tartan, and by my side is a jar of Honey in honour of my dog who died last summer.

The portrait below is a gift to me from Christian.  Then you can see them both in his studio.

And now here's a video of one of the sessions Christian and I had on the stage of Studio 54 in NYC, when he came to meet me and begin the process of the portrait.

And finally, a little film of us talking on the night of the unveiling in Edinburgh...