Narrators

Cumming, known for racy stage roles such as the Emcee in "Cabaret," narrates considerably more adult fare, too. "Once I did an Anne Rice novel, called VITTORIO, THE VAMPIRE. I had to do a scene where a teenage vampire was having sex for the first time, or was being bitten, maybe a combination of both, and it was so intense that they had to stop because they thought I was going to hyperventilate. I was doing lots of breathy vampire acting, and I was starting to fall off the chair. That was my most perilous moment in audiobooks."

For someone who's spent so much time acting on stage and in front of the camera, how does audiobook narration compare? "It's more intense because you just go into this little, dark room and are there for long, long periods of time on your own. You create the entire world--I really like that about it, that you create the whole experience," Cumming says. "And storytelling is a tradition that I really enjoy. In my cabaret show that I've been doing ["I Bought a Blue Car Today"], I tell lots of stories, and I really like that part of it."

What's next for Cumming? He recently recorded MACBETH, a novel based on Shakespeare's play. "It was really fascinating because I'm sort of obsessed with that play, and I'm going to do a production of it next year, I think, and so it was amazing to play everybody."

His deliciously morally conflicted character, political operator Eli Gold, will be back on the third season of "The Good Wife" this fall.

And he might just get to go into that little, dark room and record his own words. "I wrote a novel a couple of years ago [TOMMY'S TALE], and I never did an audiobook of it. It would be quite fun to do the audio of my own book, to go back and revisit it."--Jennifer M. Dowell

Photo by Kevin Tachman