Alan Cumming on Owning His Bisexuality and the ‘Blessing’ of Not Having Kids in His First Marriage (Exclusive)

Alan Cumming knows he didn’t get into his first marriage for the right reasons.

59-year-old presenter Traitors he married Hilary Lyon in 1985, seeking security and hoping to prove to his divorced parents that he could succeed where they had failed.

“It’s not a great thing,” Cumming tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue. “I wouldn’t recommend it. I was 21 years old when I got married for the first time. I knew I was bisexual when I first got married, and so did my wife.”

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Before divorcing in 1993, Cumming and Lyon tried to conceive a child. The Scottish actor realizes that life “would have been very different” if he had become a dad.

“I have friends who are involved, have stopped and are co-parenting. I think it’s very difficult,” says Cumming. “I think of it as a blessing that didn’t happen because of the way my life turned out later and how difficult it would have been. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to come live in America, maybe, if it meant I wouldn’t see my child. Everything happens for a reason.”

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Cumming came out publicly in 1998, a year after appearing in the Romy and Michele’s high school reunion and The world of spices.

“I decided to talk about my sexuality because there was so much speculation and there was no way to talk about it unless you made a big statement and came out,” he says. “I had to find a publication that I felt would talk about my sexuality and the nuances of it in a way where I felt I could control the story and it wouldn’t be sensationalized. One of the good things about social media – there are many negatives – is that you can actually get your message across. That didn’t exist before.”

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The Tony Award winner dated both men and women before marrying artist Grant Shaffer in 2007.

“I had a lot of bad failed relationships and I was ready not to have a bad one,” says Cumming. “There are certain things that happened in my life that made me who I am and made me understand myself much better. By the time I met Grant – we started dating when we were almost 40 – all these things kind of came out and I did a lot of therapy. I was willing to be honest and open about what I could bring to the table and what I felt I wasn’t capable of. We started our relationship just by being very honest with each other.”

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Cumming calls honesty “the most important thing in any successful relationship” and jokes that his marriage to Shaffer, 59, looks different “because it obviously lasted a lot longer” and “he has a penis.”

“When you’ve lived as long as I have — I’ve been in so many different types of relationships and situations — I just think you have to think that if you’re happy in the present, then all those things that happened before now are part of your happiness,” he says. A good woman star. “So you can’t really want to change them or regret them.”

Yvonne Tnt/BFA.com Alan Cumming hopes his ‘Instinct’ role will help ‘de-sensationalize’ LGBTQ actors on TV

Today, Cumming wants to help her fellow LGBTQ+ people feel the same way.

“As a member of that community and a proud one, I feel that I have a duty actually as someone who has a platform to look back and remember how it felt,” he says. “I didn’t feel that there were role models and people who were known to speak [when I was growing up]. Why wouldn’t I want to help young queer people who feel like they don’t belong and are worried about their future when there’s someone like me who feels that way too?”

The four-time Emmy nominee encourages anyone going through tough times to stick with it.

“No matter what you’re going through, life is long and things change,” says Cumming. “You can escape from the situation you are in and which you think you never can when you are young. You will find your tribe, no matter what it is. Now I feel very supported and loved. I really like my life now.”

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Source: HIS Education