Eli Gold from The Good Wife is one of Alan Cumming's most iconic roles

Whether he's planning the next political move or adjusting another gorgeous tie, Eli Gold has cemented his place as one of the most influential people in the world of The Good Wife. In a recent interview with GQ, Gold actor Alan Cumming credited his work on The Good Wife as being the show that helped him enter the next phase of his career. 

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"I’d never done a long-running television series. Before this I’d never really played a grown-up before. I was suddenly playing a man in a suit, and I thought, 'I can’t play that!' Most of the people I played weren’t even human!" Cumming told GQ. With movies like Spy Kids and X-Men under his belt, it makes sense that a character that typically dresses in business-professional attire may come as a small shock to his acting system. Consertive costuming aside, Cumming faced a new challenge that came with the formatting of a long-tunning television program; working without an end in sight. 

"It used to terrify me that there was no ending! When you're in a film or a play, when you get the script you know what the ending is and what direction you're going to take the character. With a long-running TV show, there is no end! ...[Instead] you can build on a character. You can lob things back to the writers, and then they would run with it and give you more things to do. [In these shows] you’re making it up as you go along; suddenly you can have an ex-wife or a child. It used to terrify me to no end,” Cumming confessed.

At the end of the day, Cumming admits that the show gave him the opportunity to stretch into new parts of his acting and take the next steps in his career, especially with the kinds of characters he was playing. 

"I feel like I grew up during that show; I grew up as an actor."