Tilda Swinton Biography

Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton (born 5 November 1960) is a British actress and model known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films, including Burn After Reading, The Beach, The Chronicles of Narnia, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performances in The Deep End and We Need to Talk About Kevin. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Michael Clayton in 2007.

Early life

Swinton was born in London. Her father is Major-General Sir John Swinton, KCVO, OBE, DL, and Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire from 1989 to 2000. Her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton (née Killen), was Australian. Her paternal great-grandfather was Scottish politician and officer-of-arms George Swinton, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour. The Swinton family is an ancient Anglo-Scots family that can trace its lineage to the Middle Ages.

Swinton attended three independent schools, Queen's Gate School in London, the West Heath Girls' School where she was a colleague of the future Princess of Wales Lady Diana Spencer, and also Fettes College for a brief period. In 1983, she graduated from New Hall (now known as Murray Edwards College) at Cambridge University with a degree in Social and Political Sciences. While at Cambridge, she joined the Communist Party; she later joined the Scottish Socialist Party.

Career

Arthouse work

Swinton worked with the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, starring in Mann ist Mann by Manfred Karge, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, before embarking on a career in film in the mid-1980s. She appeared as Julia in the 1986 television mini-series Zastrozzi: A Romance based on the Gothic novel by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her early film work included several film roles for director Derek Jarman, notably War Requiem (1989) playing a nurse opposite Laurence Olivier as an old soldier. In 1991, Swinton won the Volpi Cup Best Actress award for her role in the postmodern film Edward II.

Swinton also played the title role in Orlando, Sally Potter's film version of the novel by Virginia Woolf. The part allowed Swinton to explore matters of gender presentation onscreen which reflected her lifelong interest in androgynous style. Swinton later reflected on the role in an interview accompanied by a striking photoshoot. "People talk about androgyny in all sorts of dull ways," said Swinton, noting that the recent rerelease of Orlando had her thinking again about its pliancy. She referred to 1920s French artist and playful gender-bender Claude Cahun: "Cahun looked at the limitlessness of an androgynous gesture, which I've always been interested in."

In 1995, with producer and friend Joanna Scanlan, Swinton developed a performance/installation live art piece in the Serpentine Gallery, London, where she was on display to the public for a week, asleep or apparently so, in a glass case, as a piece of performance art. The piece is sometimes wrongly credited to Cornelia Parker, whom Swinton invited to collaborate for the installation in London. The performance, entitled The Maybe, was repeated in 1996 at the Museo Barracco in Rome and in 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She also appeared in the music video for Orbital's "The Box". She has collaborated with the fashion designers Viktor & Rolf. She was the focus of their 'One Woman Show' 2003, in which they made all the models look like copies of Swinton, and she read a poem (of her own) that included the line, "There is only one you. Only one".

Mainstream films

Recent years have seen Swinton move towards more mainstream projects, including the leading role in the American film The Deep End (2001), in which she plays the mother of a gay son she suspects of killing his boyfriend. For this performance she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. She appeared as a supporting character in the films The Beach (2000), featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Vanilla Sky (2001) with Tom Cruise and, as the archangel Gabriel in Constantine (2005) with Keanu Reeves. Swinton has also appeared in the British films The Statement (2003) and Young Adam (2003), and sat on the jury of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

In 2005, Swinton performed as the White Witch Jadis, in the film version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and as Audrey Cobb in the Mike Mills film adaptation of the novel Thumbsucker. Swinton later had cameos in Narnia's sequels,The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

In 2007, Swinton's performance as Karen Crowder in Michael Clayton earned her both a BAFTA award for Best Supporting Actress as well as the Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role at the 2008 80th Academy Awards, the film's sole win. Swinton next appeared in the 2008 Coen Brothers film, Burn After Reading. Swinton said of the film, in which she plays opposite George Clooney, "I don't know if it will make anybody else laugh, but it really made us laugh while making it." She was cast for the role of Elizabeth Abbott in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, alongside Brad Pitt.

She had a starring role as the titular character in Erick Zonca's Julia, which premiered at the 2008 Berlin International Film Festival and later saw a limited U.S. release in May 2009. Several critics praised her performance and some claimed it should have won her an Academy Award.

She stars in the new film adaptation of the novel We Need to Talk about Kevin, released in October 2011. She portrays the mother of the title character, a teenage boy who commits a high school massacre. She has joined the cast of Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, a vampire film which will start filming in June 2012. She is joined by John Hurt and Tom Hiddleston.

Other projects

In 1988 she was a member of the jury at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival. In 1993 she was a member of the jury at the 18th Moscow International Film Festival. In August 2006, she opened the new Screen Academy Scotland production centre in Edinburgh.

In July 2008, she founded the film festival Ballerina Ballroom Cinema Of Dreams. The event took place in a ballroom in Nairn on Scotland's Moray Firth in August. Swinton has collaborated with artist Patrick Wolf on his 2009 album The Bachelor, contributing four spoken word pieces.

Swinton appeared at the 2009 Academy Awards, helping to present the 2009 Best Supporting Actress Awards. In 2009, Swinton and Mark Cousins embarked on a project where they mounted a 33.5-tonne portable cinema on a large truck, hauling it manually through the Scottish Highlands, creating a travelling independent film festival. The project was featured prominently in a documentary called Cinema is Everywhere. The festival was repeated again in 2011.

In 2012, Swinton appeared in Doug Aitken's SONG 1, an outdoor video installation created for the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington D.C. In November of the same year, she and Sandro Kopp made cameo appearances in episode 6 of the BBC comedy Getting On.

In February 2013, she played the part of David Bowie's wife in the promotional video for his song, The Stars (Are Out Tonight), directed by Floria Sigismondi. In March of the same year, she presented her live art work, entitled "The Maybe", at the New York Museum of Modern Art. In May 2013 it was announced that Mrs Swinton would be the face of the Chanel Pre-Fall Paris-Edimbourg collection. This collection was inspired by Scottish traditional fashion and fabrics. In July of the same year, Swinton appeared photographed in front of Moscow's Kremlin holding a rainbow flag in support of the country's LGBT community, reportedly releasing a statement: "In solidarity. From Russia with love."

Personal life

Swinton lives in Nairn, overlooking the Moray Firth in the Highland region of Scotland with her twins and her partner Sandro Kopp, a German/New Zealand painter. John Byrne, father to their twins Honor and Xavier (born 1997), lives in Edinburgh with his partner Jeanine Davies.

In 2013, Swinton was named as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by The Guardian.

Filmography

Film and TV credits
Year	Film	Role	Notes
1986	Egomania " Insel ohne Hoffnung	Sally
	Zastrozzi: A Romance	Julia	TV miniseries
	Caravaggio	Lena
1986-1990	The Open Universe	Carla
1987	Aria	Young Girl
	Friendship's Death	Friendship
1988	'
	Cycling the Frame	The Cyclist	Short
	Das Andere Ende der Welt
	Degrees of Blindness
	L' Ispirazione		Short
1989	Play Me Something	Hairdresser
	War Requiem	Nurse
1990	Your Cheatin' Heart	Cissie Crouch	TV series (6 episodes)
	'	Madonna
1991	Edward II	Isabella	Volpi Cup for Best Actress
	'	Queenie
1992	Shakespeare: The Animated Tales	Ophelia (voice)	TV miniseries
	Orlando	Orlando	Seattle International Film Festival Award for Best Actress Thessaloniki Film Festival Award for Best Actress Nominated "? European Film Award for Best Actress
	Screenplay	Ella/Max Gericke	TV series (1 episode: "Man to Man")
1993	Blue		Voice
	Wittgenstein	Lady Ottoline Morrell
1994	Remembrance of Things Fast: True Stories Visual Lies
	Visions of Heaven and Hell	Narrator	TV series
1996	Female Perversions	Eve Stephens
1997	Conceiving Ada	Ada Augusta Byron King, Countess of Lovelace
1998	Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon	Muriel Belcher
	'	Actress
	Herlizeares	Diera
1999	'	Mum
2000	Possible Worlds	Joyce	Nominated "? Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
	'	Sal
2001	Vanilla Sky	Rebecca Dearborn
	'	Margaret Hall	Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actress Las Vegas Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Chlotrudis Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama Nominated "? Independent Spirit Award for Best Female Lead Nominated "? Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Satellite Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
2002	Adaptation	Valerie Thomas	Nominated "? Phoenix Film Critics Society Award for Best Cast Nominated "? Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
	Teknolust	Rosetta/Ruby/Marinne/Olive
2003	'	Annemarie Livi
	Young Adam	Ella Gault	BAFTA Scotland for Best Actress in a Scottish Film Nominated "? BIFA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a British Independent Film Nominated "? London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actress of the Year
2005	Constantine	Gabriel
	'	Jadis, the White Witch	Nominated "? London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated "? MTV Movie Award for Best Villain Nominated "? Saturn Award for Best Actress
	The Somme	Narrator	TV movie
	Absent Presence	Operator	Short
	Broken Flowers	Penny
	Thumbsucker	Audrey Cobb	Gijón International Film Festival Award for Best Actress
2006	Stephanie Daley	Lydie Crane	Nominated "? Satellite Award for Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
	Galápagos	Narrator	BBC Documentary
2007	Sleepwalkers	Violinist	Short
	Strange Culture	Hope Kurtz	Documentary
	Faceless		Voice
	'	Camélia
	Michael Clayton	Karen Crowder	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress Detroit Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Vancouver Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated "? Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated "? Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture Nominated "? London Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated "? Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated "? Satellite Award for Best Supporting Actress - Motion Picture Nominated "? Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role
2008	Julia	Julia	Evening Standard British Film Award for Best Actress International Cinephile Society Award for Best Actress Village Voice Film Poll - Best Actress Nominated "? César Award for Best Actress Nominated "? London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actress of the Year Nominated "? New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress
	'	Jadis, the White Witch; Centaur	Cameo
	Burn After Reading	Katie Cox	Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role
	'	Elizabeth Abbott	London Film Critics' Circle for British Supporting Actress of the Year Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated "? Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Cast Nominated "? Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture
2009	'	Blonde
	The Invisible Frame	The Cyclist
	I Am Love	Emma Recchi	Dublin Film Critics Award for Best Female Performance Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists - European Silver Ribbon Award Nominated "? London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actress of the Year Nominated "? San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Satellite Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Drama
2010	'	Jadis, the White Witch
2011	We Need to Talk About Kevin	Eva Khatchadourian	Austin Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress European Film Award for Best Actress National Board of Review Award for Best Actress Online Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress San Francisco Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated "? AACTA International Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Alliance of Women Film Journalists Award for Best Actress Nominated "? BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role Nominated "? BIFA Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a British Independent Film Nominated "? Broadcast Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Golden Globe Award for Best Actress " Motion Picture Drama Nominated "? Indiana Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated "? London Film Critics Circle Award for Actress of the Year Nominated "? London Film Critics Circle Award for British Actress of the Year Nominated "? San Diego Film Critics Society Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Nominated "? Southeastern Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Women Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress Nominated "? Women Film Critics Circle Award for Best Courage in Acting
	Genevieve Goes Boating	Narrator	Video short
2012	Moonrise Kingdom	Social Services
2013	The Stars (Are Out Tonight)	David Bowie's Music Video (Special Cameo)
	The Next Day	David Bowie's Music Video (Special Cameo)
	Only Lovers Left Alive	Eve
	Snowpiercer	Mason
	The Zero Theorem	Dr Shrink-Rom	Filming