Tilda Swinton

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 own 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).