I have been talking to the Scottish-born actor Alan Cumming on his cell phone, or, as he calls it, his "mobile," as he hurries through the streets of Manhattan, and now he has arrived at the offices of The Art Party, the non-profit theater collective he helped found. He is distracted momentarily by someone who works there; she wants to show him something. "There's a talk show in England called Richard & Judy and they've sent playing cards," he explains to me. "And I'm on one of them. I'm the ace of hearts."

The card fits, especially if it describes Alan Cumming's charitable works, AIDS-related and otherwise. He contributed a track to the Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS CD Home for the Holidays, dueting with Liza Minnelli on "Baby, It's Cold Outside." Last September, he served as an honorary chair for STOP AIDS Project's San Francisco HIV Prevention Awards. He has lent his name and energy to such organizations as amfAR, Friends In Deed, and Living Beyond Belief, an organization which supports the AIDS-activist endeavors of teenagers. And Alan is fresh-off hosting the closing ceremonies of Braking the Cycle, a three-day bike trek from Chesapeake Bay in Maryland to Manhattan to raise money for New York City's Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center's HIV/AIDS services.

ˇ"It was so nice because all of these people spent days cycling across five states—and through the hurricane," Alan says about the event. "They all arrived and it was really lovely and really sort of emotional. All their friends were there to meet them. I liked it. I want to do it next year, if I'm [in town]. My friend did it, and he said [that]...you spend all that time riding, and remembering why you're riding." I mention that I would like to do the ride, if only I first quit smoking, or at least cut down a bit more than I already have. "I just can't [cut down]. I'm all for one and one for all. I can't just have the odd one," Alan shares. "As I get older, and I kind of keep coming back to smoking, I think, 'Nah, I've got to try and not do this. It's not good for you.' Even though I think it's delicious. So delicious."

His acting, like his dedication to causes he believes in, has a wide reach, though he is so good at his trade that you might not at first connect the manipulative suitor in Circle of Friends to the HIV-positive friend in the indie Urbania to the Nightcrawler super-villain in X2: X-Men United, or match the nerd-turned-millionaire Sandy Frink in Romy and Michele's High School Reunion to mad scientist Fegan Floop in Spy Kids. Throw in Spice World and Shakespeare (Julie Taymor's Titus), and you realize that Alan Cumming will always keep you guessing about where he might pop up next. He made a big splash this side of the Atlantic in his Tony Award-winning turn as the Emcee in Cabaret, a role he first brought to life on the London stage, and has since had time to collaborate with Jennifer Jason Leigh to produce, write, direct, and act in the film The Anniversary Party, tape episodes of Oxygen's Eavesdropping with Alan Cumming (with more of the talk-show specials on the way, he promises), pen a novel (Tommy's Tale), and return to the New York stage with Jean Genet's Elle.

With such a busy schedule, I wonder how he sustains his advocacy: Simply for the fact "that it takes so little for me to do something that could potentially mean a lot." He quickly qualifies this: "A lot of [what] I do is go to parties—I'm not carrying sacks of flour around, or anything. I'm going to parties and getting photographed, or doing an auction." He adds, "Sometimes, obviously, I'd rather be at home, but usually they're with people I really like for causes I really like, and they're not exactly painful things to do. If I didn't do them, I'd feel like, 'What's wrong with you?'" He does realize the power of being famous, he says, to get attention "for things that otherwise might not get it, or as much."

Others have recognized his advocacy efforts, even as he is quick to downplay what he adds to the mix. "Alan has been a tremendous supporter of Bailey House for years," says Gina Quattrochi, executive director of  Bailey House (BH), a New York City-based provider of housing and supportive services to homeless individuals with HIV/AIDS and their families. "Through his assistance with our annual Open Your Heart auction and throughout the year, he has helped not only raise money for our organization but also raise the level of awareness of HIV/AIDS and homelessness," she adds. Alan was honored by Bailey House this past year, and has since joined its Board of Advocates.

Asked why he became involved with Bailey House, the answer is already on his lips: ˇ"Because it's basic. You can't get medical treatment unless you have an address. If you're homeless, you're fucked," he says passionately. "Basically, what they do is raise money to give homeless people a place to stay so then they can get treatment. I like things that go back to the basics." Like God's Love, We Deliver, he adds, which provides nutritional services to people with AIDS. "It's bad enough being HIV-positive, but to not be able to get treatment because of some other unfortunate thing that's happened to you...," he trails off, letting silence feed the imagination.

It's becoming harder for me to believe that "going to parties and getting photographed" is an accurate description of his efforts. I know what he means, of course—he doesn't want to compare himself to someone who is hitting the streets to do outreach and raise awareness—but even now he is acting as an impromptu ambassador for Bailey House, extolling its recent initiatives to do outreach in African countries. "Regina has been to Africa," he says, using Ms. Quattrochi's full name. ˇ"And I think they're going to start to do more with Africa. That's another thing that I think is out of control; India is going to be next." Gina Quattrochi fills in more details: ˇ"In spring 2003, Christine Campbell, the Deputy Director of BH's technical assistance program and I traveled to South Africa to meet with HIV/AIDS providers and advocates. We were incredibly inspired. HIV/AIDS advocates±including Mercy Makhalemele, NAPWA, and others—have carried the anti-apartheid spirit into their HIV/AIDS work as they fight against the rising tide of infections and government indifference to the epidemic. BH, funded in part by the MAC AIDS Fund, is working to develop a program for the mutual sharing of expertiseˇXwe have as much to learn from them as they do from us."

One of the first organizations Alan became involved with was Crusaid, Britian's national fundraiser for HIV/AIDS. During the late eighties, he was working on a play in Glasgow, Scotland, at the Tron Theatre and the production was also lending a helping hand to Crusaid by hosting a special night for the organization. "There were people there who were infected," he says about the Crusaid representatives and guests who arrived. "And I saw someone in the front row in a wheelchair who was obviously really sick [and] who I knew but hadn't seen for a long time. Who I had had sex with. That was really galling. That was when I first thought, 'Fuck me. This is scary.' Up till then, it was still the early days and people were trying to get more attention [for AIDS]; it was still a big stigma. It was also something that 'happened in America.' It wasn't accepted that it was everywhere, [and] in Europe, too. That was when I got a big eye-opener and started to do more and get wiser."

It seems, in some ways, that the U.S. even now struggles with the same issue of acceptance; mainstream America is not exactly in denial, but perhaps overconfident that the needs surrounding HIV/AIDS—education, cheaper and faster access to treatment, housing and food, to name a few—have been met. Alan offers the view of a woman from Africa who had come over to talk with Bailey House: "She was talking about the AIDS situation there, and was just saying how, in a way, sorry she felt for America, or for the West, because [AIDS awareness] was becoming so complacent. At least where they were, they knew it was a big problem. In a way, we were getting complacent, thinking it has gone away. That was fascinating."

I ask him his thoughts on complacency in the U.S. "With most things, if you point things out to people, something will happen," he says, optimistic and confident. "I don't think it's an inherent human trait about people here that they get complacent," he continues. "It's absolutely got to do with education. The government. There's a whole generation of kids—not kids, they're in their twenties—who've a very loose attitude to AIDS and to safe sex. It's galling. They weren't educated in the same way my generation was." He provides an example: "I think it's absolutely scary that the only form of preventative sex education that is supported by this government is abstinence. The media is very flighty. AIDS is a little 'last century,' in terms of the media." He revises his thought: "It's a two-pronged thing—the complacency comes from the media, because it's so faddish, and from the government. Although [this government] is pouring more money into AIDS research, it seems like a weird investment when you don't actually educate the kids about how not to get it in the first place." Alan adds that he is horrified by the climbing HIV infection rates for younger Americans. We have to remember, he says about this era of life-prolonging drugs, that HIV/AIDS is still "a killer and you still don't want to get it."

He is adamant that the cultural silence around HIV/AIDS be broken, and sees art and social activism linked in this regard. "When you're an artist, you do it because you want to say things, spread messages, tell stories. When people listen to you, you want to be able to say things that you feel more strongly about than others." He mentions the unfortunate gag order we were invited to follow last year about the U.S. invasion of Iraq: "Everyone was told to shut up. And everyone thought it was disrespectful and unpatriotic for a celebrity to say what they felt—that is so full of shit. Because all the rest of the time, you get asked your opinion about every other thing in the world, so why shouldn't you say what you feel at a time when it's most important for people to speak up? The tragic downside to all that is that you get very stupid people who have opinions!" He laughs, and I mention that no one was criticizing celebrities who were toeing the party line: "Exactly. 'You're for our troops—hurrah! Let's kill Saddam'—that would've been fine. But when people have got issues about it—it's just a double standard; it was censorship. If someone wants to ask me my opinion about the latest hemlines, or what I think about this film, or so-and-so's love life—then I don't see why they shouldn't ask me or I shouldn't speak out about things that I feel are important, or more important than those things."

Last year at a Living Beyond Belief fundraiser, Alan was quoted as saying, "At Herb Ritts's funeral, who was a truly wonderful man, HIV/AIDS were not mentioned at all. How tragic is that?" He owns up: "I did say that. I meant that in 2003 [it is hard to believe the silence around] a man who was in the world of celebrity and fashion, two of the occupations where you would've thought that there would be no stigma about having AIDS, or HIV-related illnesses. At his funeral, when he obviously died of AIDS-related illness, why was it not mentioned? Because, more importantly, when you [do mention why], it makes someone in Bumfuck, Arizona, think it's not so bad....It pisses me off when certain [famous] people who are gay make a big play about not being gay because it attaches shame to it. And it makes people think that it's a shameful thing to do. Therefore, when someone dies and they don't mention what they die from, I think that means in some way, they're attaching shame to what it was that made them die. I think that's tragic."

By now I'm convinced that "going to parties and getting photographed" doesn't tell the whole story of his efforts. Attaching one's name to a cause still means something, of course, but Alan is willing and unafraid to speak out in public, even if what he addresses is unpopular.

Alan Cumming is soon off to Australia to film Son of the Mask, a follow-up to the Jim Carrey movie a few years back, and he is still helping to nurture a television series best known by its working title, Mr. And Mr. Nash. ˇ§It's kind of been the longest gestation of a half-hour script I've ever known, but it's still going. I'm waiting for a new draft for it and I'm supposed to shoot the pilot in March.ˇ¨ Described as a "gay Hart to Hart" but more modern, it features two interior designers from New York who get tangled up in murder mysteries. "The tone of it is important to me because it would be the first time with gay people on network TV where their gayness would be secondary to what the show's about. It's important that that tone is right, and it's not a lot of gay gags. I want to make sure there's a relationship that's strong, and truthful, between the two men, and their extended family. Then also on top of that: clever plots, murder and clues, and all that stuff." So, a light-hearted caper? Alan chuckles, "It's sort of light-hearted. Light-hearted murder, you know!"

Even as the conversation comes to aclose, Alan finds time to squeeze in one last plug: "Make sure and tell people to buy those Until There's a Cure bracelets." He wears his all the time he tells me. It must match quite nicely with that ace of hearts up his sleeve.

Chael Needle is Managing Editor of A&U. He interviewed Angels in America's Justin Kirk and Cary Brokaw for the December 2003 issue.