Alan Cumming reveals father’s abuse in new book

ACTOR Alan Cumming has revealed he took a DNA test to prove his parentage after his father told him he was not his son.

Alan Cumming was a high profile supporter of Scottish independence during the referendum campaign. Picture: Robert Perry

The Scots star’s late father Alex made the shocking claim after being angered by his son’s research of their family history on BBC show Who Do You Think You Are?

In “revenge”, he claimed Cumming was the product of an affair his mother Mary had during their marriage in the 1960s.

The Good Wife actor was stunned by the revelation and took the DNA test, which proved his father’s claim was false.

The 49-year-old has previously told how his father, a forester who died aged 72 in 2010, dished out beatings to him and his brother Tom when they were growing up in Carnoustie, Angus.

The DNA test story is revealed in New York-based Cumming’s new autobiography, Not My Father’s Son, published next week.

In the book, he tells how he and his brother confronted their father about his cruelty following the parentage incident four years ago and never spoke to him again.

Speaking about his father’s claim that he was not his son, Cumming said: “Four years ago, the night before I was due to start filming Who Do You Think You Are?, my father sent my brother to my apartment in London to tell me I wasn’t his son.

“I had not seen my father for 16 years; he was estranged from us because he was a very violent, abusive man.

“I couldn’t stop talking and thinking about it and when my father died, I decided I wanted to write it down.

“To make sense of it, I had to go back to childhood. Ultimately my mum, my brother and I got through this very difficult time in our lives and became closer in the end.”

He added: “I have wanted to write something about my childhood for a very long time but I wasn’t ready to do it and these events were the catalyst for it.

“I think I did it partly to make sure that I, by putting this out into the world, will never look back at what happened to me in my childhood and think of it as acceptable.

“Abusers make you feel like it’s acceptable. And for the world who knows me one way, now they’ll know me in a different way, and I’m glad because it’s all a part of me.

“My father would be absolutely furious about the book and I would never have written it if he were alive, I don’t think.”

Cumming, who was a high-profile supporter of Scottish independence in the referendum, told how his father would beat him if he failed to do his household chores. His parents split when he was a teenager.

The actor came out as bisexual in the mid-1990s following the breakdown of his first marriage.

The X-Men star, who is currently starring in musical Cabaret in New York, married American artist Grant Shaffer in a civil ceremony in 2007.

His appearance on Who Do You Think You Are? in 2010 focused on the mysterious death of his maternal grandfather Thomas Darling.

Cumming discovered that the much-decorated Second World War soldier died during a game of Russian roulette in Malaysia.

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