Tilda Swinton
Birthdate: Nov 5, 1960
Birthplace: London, England, UK
A unique actor with one of the most distinctive and artistically curated careers in her generation, Tilda Swinton (birthname: Katherine Matilda Swinton) has become synonymous with the crème de la crème of international cinema. She has also skillfully transitioned back and forth from experimental and art cinema to commercial movies, the rare actor with a strong following in many camps that often have little crossover.
This parallels Swinton’s self-identification as queer and also her distinctive androgynous presence, most dramatically displayed in Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992). She co-stars with Idris Elba in George Miller’s romantic epic, Three Thousand Years of Longing, which premiered at the 2022 edition of the Cannes Film Festival.
After quickly joining the Royal Shakespeare Company straight out of Cambridge University in 1984, Tilda Swinton made the crucial decision to collaborate as a performer with the prodigious late experimental British filmmaker, Derek Jarman. Swinton became a major presence in Jarman’s extraordinary movies, including Caravaggio (1986), The Last of England (1987), War Requiem (1989, with Sir Laurence Olivier), and her award-winning performance in Edward II (1991), based on Christopher Marlowe’s play.
She portrayed Muriel Belcher in John Maybury’s stunning Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998), with Derek Jacobi and Daniel Craig. A measure of Swinton’s standing in international cinephilia was that, by 1993, she had already served on the juries of the Berlin and Moscow Film Festivals.
Tilda Swinton made a sharp swing toward more commercial projects after the turn of the century, appearing with Leonardo Di Caprio in The Beach (2000); Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky (2001), Keanu Reeves in Constantine (2005), with Michael Caine in The Statement (2003), and with Ewan McGregor in Young Adam (2003). This new phase was capped with spectacular success in her supporting role in the acclaimed Tony Gilroy drama starring George Clooney, and Michael Clayton (2007), for which Swinton won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.
She rejoined Clooney, along with Brad Pitt, Frances McDormand, and John Malkovich, for the Coen Brother's Burn After Reading (2008), and then rejoined Pitt, along with Cate Blanchett, for David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008). Swinton finally reached leading role status in Erick Zonca’s John Cassavetes adaptation, Julia (2008), and earned accolades for her performance in Lynne Ramsay’s devastating We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011) with Ezra Miller and John C. Reilly.
Tilda Swinton has continued to be cast by the world’s leading filmmakers—her filmography virtually ticks off that prestigious list—with Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive (2013), co-starring Tom Hiddleston and Mia Wasikowska; Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer (2013), with Chris Evans, Octavia Spencer, and Ed Harris; Judd Apatow’s Trainwreck (2015), with Amy Schumer and Bill Hader; Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (2021), in a head-turning double role; and five films by Luca Guadagnino: The Protagonists (1999); Tilda Swinton: The Love Factory (2002); I Am Love (2009); A Bigger Splash (2015), with Dakota Johnson and Ralph Fiennes; and Suspiria (2018), again with Johnson and Mia Goth.
Nothing better illustrates Swinton’s diversity than her presence as The Ancient One in Marvel’s Doctor Strange (2016) with Benedict Cumberbatch and the mega-blockbuster Avengers: Endgame (2019), and then as part of the ensemble of British independent filmmaker Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II, and as the lead in the first English (and Spanish) language movie by Cannes-winner Thai filmmaker, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, for his acclaimed science fiction/mystery film, Memoria (2021).
Swinton continued to work with director Hogg, in The Eternal Daughter (2022); director Anderson, in Asteroid City (2022), with Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Bryan Cranston, and Jeffrey Wright; filmmaker Julio Torres’ untitled film (2022), with RZA, Isabella Rossellini, Greta Lee; and David Fincher’s highly anticipated thriller, The Killer (2022), with Michael Fassbender. Swinton is slated to star in Joshua Oppenheimer’s post-apocalyptic musical, The End (date to be announced), with George MacKay.
Tilda Swinton’s performance art has been presented at the Serpentine Gallery, Rome’s Museo Barracco, Hirshhorn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, and performed in videos by the electronica group, Orbital, and experimental videos by Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Floria Sigismondi. Swinton founded the film festival, Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams, and created a multi-year traveling Scottish Highlands cinema program, Pilgrimage: A Scottish Road Move Festival, with filmmaker Mark Cousins, who chronicled the project in his film, Cinema Is Everywhere (2011).
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Personal Details
London-born Tilda Swinton’s parents are the late Judith Balfour and Sir John Swinton, a former British Army major general who held the titles of the Laird of Kimmerghame House and Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire. Her Swinton family lineage is distinguished and extends 35 generations to the 9th century. Though born in London, Tilda Swinton identifies as Scottish. She has three brothers. Swinton attended Queen’s Gate School, West Heath Girls’ School, and Edinburgh’s Fettes College, and then spent two years as a volunteer in Kenyan and South African children’s schools. She graduated from New Hall (now Murray Edwards College) at the University of Cambridge with degrees in social and political sciences, and also studied theater.
With her partner, artist-playwright John Byrne, she had twins Xavier and future actor Honor Swinton Byrne (with whom mother and daughter played mother-daughter roles in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir and The Souvenir Part II. She currently lives in the Scottish Highlands with her children and partner, the German painter Sandro Kopp. Swinton commented in early 2022 that she is considering quitting acting to become a palliative carer after suffering from long COVID-19. Her height is 5’ 10½”.
Filmography
actor
Previous (18)
- 2024 |
- 2024 | ProblemistaasElizabeth
Problemista
Alejandro is an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador struggling to bring his unusual ideas to life in NY. As time runs out on his work visa, a job assisting an erratic art-world outcast becomes his only hope to stay in the country.
- 2022 | The Eternal DaughterasJulie Hart
The Eternal Daughter
Returning to a hotel now haunted by its mysterious past, an artist and her elderly mother confront long-buried secrets in their former family home.
- 2022 | Three Thousand Years of LongingasAlithea
Three Thousand Years of Longing
A lonely scholar, on a trip to Istanbul, discovers a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom.
- 2021 |
- 2021 | The Souvenir: Part IIasRosalind
The Souvenir: Part II
In the aftermath of her tumultuous relationship, Julie begins to untangle her fraught love for him in making her graduation film, sorting fact from his elaborately constructed fiction.
- 2021 | The French DispatchasJ.K.L. Berensen
The French Dispatch
A love letter to journalists set in an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional twentieth century French city that brings to life a collection of stories published in "The French Dispatch Magazine".
- 2021 | The Human Voice
The Human Voice
A woman watches time passing next to the suitcases of her ex-lover (who is supposed to come pick them up, but never arrives) and a restless dog who doesn't understand that his master has abandoned him. Two living beings facing abandonment.
- 2020 | The Personal History of David CopperfieldasBetsey Trotwood
The Personal History of David Copperfield
A modern take on Charles Dickens's classic tale of a young orphan who is able to triumph over many obstacles.
- 2019 | The Dead Don’t DieasZelda Winston
The Dead Don’t Die
The peaceful town of Centerville finds itself battling a zombie horde as the dead start rising from their graves.
- 2019 | The GardenasMadonna
The Garden
A nearly wordless visual narrative inter cuts two main stories and a couple of minor ones.
- 2019 | The SouvenirasRosalind
The Souvenir
A young film student in the early '80s becomes romantically involved with a complicated and untrustworthy man.
- 2018 |
- 2018 |
- 2016 | Letters from BaghdadasGertrude Bell
Letters from Baghdad
Gertrude Bell, the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day, shaped the destiny of Iraq after WWI in ways that still reverberate today.
- 2016 | Doctor StrangeasThe Ancient One
Doctor Strange
While on a journey of physical and spiritual healing, a brilliant neurosurgeon is drawn into the world of the mystic arts.
- 2007 | Michael ClaytonasKaren Crowder
Michael Clayton
A law firm brings in its "fixer" to remedy the situation after a lawyer has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multibillion-dollar class action suit.
- 1991 |
Some Facts About Tilda Swinton
Legendary Classmates: When Tilda Swinton attended the boarding school of West Heath, her classmate and friend were Lady Diana Spencer, who was to become the Princess of Wales.
Entitlement: Swinton has commented that her parents had expected that she would extend her familial titled legacy by marrying a duke.
High Rank: Tilda Swinton was ranked #13 on the New York Times’ list of “The 25 Greatest Actors of the 21st Century (so far)”.
Performance Art: Tilda Swinton made a sensation as a performance artist in her work, “The Maybe,” at London’s Serpentine Gallery, in which she lay sleeping inside a glass case for a solid week.
Protest: Swinton was nearly arrested by Russian authorities in 2013 for waving a rainbow flag in Moscow’s Red Square to protest Russia’s new anti-LGBTQ laws.
