Tilda Swinton
Tilda Swinton
Katherine Matilda "Tilda" Swinton of Kimmerghameis a British actress, performance artist, model, and fashion muse, known for both arthouse, independent and mainstream films. She began her career in films directed by Derek Jarman, starting with Caravaggio in 1985. In 1991, Swinton won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival for her performance as Isabella of France in Edward II. She next starred in Sally Potter's Orlando in 1992 and was nominated for the European Film Award...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMovie Actress
Date of Birth5 November 1960
CityLondon, England
I was one of the very few people brought up on these islands who hadn't been given the books along with my mother's milk. So I came to it with a beginner's mind. I still haven't read them all, but I thought it was a good read, and I thought it would make a good film. So I was very happy to do it. When I met with Andrew Adamson I just thought he was the right person for the job.
And the idea of going through the back of a wardrobe into this parentless land where you're the only people who can prevail, I found really moving.
This film is about the fact that it's important for people, particularly families, to communicate with each other. But we're playing people who find it hard to communicate. You can't wrap the plot up into a tiny little sentence. So it was clear to me it was going to take some time to get the film made.
The people I'm working with tend to be people I know, who are my friends, and I like hanging out with them. There's nothing better than making a long-term project with your friends. It's just dreamy.
I was always, and I still am to a certain extent, one of those lazy people who spends a lot of time with Italian friends and yet constantly says I don't speak Italian. Things slow down when I start speaking Italian.
Maybe it was my revenge on people who had been unkind to me as a child. But it was very easy and a thrill to freeze up children.
I think of great masters, like [Alfred] Hitchcock, for example, who works absolutely within this sensational realm. You feel like you can always tell what temperature a room is in a Hitchcock film because the people feel alive, they don't feel like they're just being filmed on a stage.
I think that both Luca [ Guadagnino]and I have a kind of resistance to the idea of a film holding a moral message because that would exclude so many people from feeling that it was their film and it's important for a piece of work to feel owned by every member of the audience.
I've only ever gone into studio films with people I really like.
What very often happens when people make films about rich people, the camera is quite mesmerised by the opulence and quite theatrical in fact.
I've been on the other side of the table many times, trying to get people to be sympathetic to projects, and I've been the victim of that kind of intense kindness masking extreme stupidity.
How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity?
There's something radical about a coming-of-age story that's about everyone trying to come of age at the same time, ... It's not so much about growing up as growing on. There's something compassionate about parents not knowing what they're doing.
Don't you think... the festival has, I don't know, gone a little funny this year?