Before Robert Malcolm Cumming was portraying a British musician on screen, he was a kid from West Michigan who never imagined acting could become a career.
Born in Grand Rapids and raised in nearby Stevensville, Cumming graduated from Lakeshore High School in 2010 with a love for music and performing in school plays. Hollywood wasn’t part of the plan.
“It wasn’t really a possibility growing up in Michigan,” he says.
But that changed almost overnight.
While family members who worked in television were visiting Michigan, one of their production assistants unexpectedly quit. Cumming was offered the job. He was working in the building trades at the time, so he finished up a tiling job he was working on, packed his bags, and headed to Los Angeles.
What began as a production assistant position became a three-year education in how Hollywood really works.
His uncle, acclaimed showrunner John McNamara (Aquarius, The Magicians), became an early example of the kind of leader Cumming hopes to emulate.
“I watched how he treated people,” Cumming says. “He took care of his crew. You hear stories about directors and showrunners letting power go to their heads, but he was the opposite. He’d pay for food trucks out of his own pocket. It showed me how collaborative filmmaking can be.”
Rather than immediately chasing the spotlight, Cumming quietly absorbed everything around him.
“I learned pretty quickly that if someone asked me to do something, I said yes.”
That mentality carried him well beyond his days as a PA. He worked as a grip and in fabrication carpentry, while eventually leaning into the camera department and learning the technical side of cinematography.
“When you’ve worked in every department, you develop a respect for everyone on set.”
His dream collaborators read like a who’s who of A-list creatives, from Derek Cianfrance and Paul Thomas Anderson to Justine Triet and John Carpenter, while his acting influences range from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Heath Ledger to Martin Short and John Candy. Author Jim Harrison’s Brown Dog stories are among his favorite works of literature.
Eventually, he enrolled in the Baron Brown Acting Conservatory in Santa Monica, completing the demanding two-and-a-half-year program while continuing to work behind the scenes.
Today, after more than 13 years in Los Angeles, Cumming is beginning to see those years of preparation pay off.
His biggest opportunity so far is Elijah Peel, a feature film that was generating a lot of buzz just prior to its release in August.
The film follows the title character, played by Cumming. The stadium-filling rock star’s life spirals due to addiction, and a heart attack forces him to confront everything he’s become. During his recovery, an unlikely friendship with a remarkable young girl changes his perspective and sets him on a path toward redemption.
Music was central to the role, but it wasn’t why Cumming landed it.
“They cast me before they even knew I could sing,” he laughs.
One of the film’s most demanding scenes required him to perform while singing live at the piano—a skill he had to learn almost from scratch.
“I knew the white keys and a few songs in the key of C.”
Another surprise? His accent.
Despite growing up in Michigan, Cumming plays the role using a British Cockney dialect (he learned from watching Peaky Blinders) so convincingly that audiences regularly assume he’s actually British. Off-screen, however, there’s no mistaking his Midwestern roots.
“I always get told, ‘I knew you were a
Midwest boy.'”
He’s still trying to figure out exactly what people mean by that.
“My guess is it’s the humility,” he said,
illustrating it with an example.
“When you’re hiking here, you nod at everyone you pass. You strike up a conversation and you’re still yelling back and forth a hundred yards down the trail.”
That openness, he says, disappears in many larger cities.
“In the Midwest, you just treat everybody
the same.”
Even with a lead role arriving and bigger auditions beginning to roll in, Cumming isn’t pretending life suddenly became glamorous.
He still works carpentry jobs between acting gigs and recently wrapped a stretch of 12- to 15-hour workdays.
At the time this publication went to print, he was back in West Michigan, spending time with family and relaxing while preparing for whatever comes next.
“I want to get my head and body in the best place I can,” he says. “I think some big auditions are coming.”
Cumming knows success isn’t simply about landing the next role. It’s about earning the respect of the people around you. That perspective may be the most Michigan thing about him. With Elijah Peel now entering the world and bigger opportunities on the horizon, West Michigan audiences may be watching the beginning of something much bigger for a hometown actor.
