Tilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton
Swinton in Edinburgh, August 2007
Born	Katherine Matilda Swinton 5 November 1960 (1960-11-05) (age 48) London, England
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1986 - present
Domestic partner(s)	John Byrne Sandro Kopp (2004- present)
Awards won Academy Awards Best Supporting Actress 2007 Michael Clayton BAFTA Awards Best Actress in a Scottish Film 2003 Young Adam Best Actress in a Supporting Role 2007 Michael Clayton Other awards Volpi Cup for Best Actress 1991 Edward II

Katherine Matilda "Tilda" Swinton (born 5 November 1960) is an Academy Award-, BAFTA-, BAFTA Scotland-, and Coppa Volpi award-winning British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films.

Biography

Early life

Swinton was born in London. Her mother, Judith Balfour (née Killen), was Australian, and her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton of Kimmerghame, Berwickshire, KCVO, is Scottish.^[1][2][3][4] The Swinton family is an ancient Anglo-Scots family that can trace its lineage to the ninth century.^[4] Swinton attended West Heath Girls' School (the same class as Diana, Princess of Wales), and also Fettes College for a brief period. In 1983, she graduated from Murray Edwards College (previously know as New Hall) at Cambridge University with a degree in Social and Political Sciences. She has two Honorary Doctorates: one from Napier University in Edinburgh, received in August 2006 and one from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) in Glasgow, received July 2006. She was a contributing editor to the literary magazine Zembla.

Career

Swinton worked with the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, and the Royal Shakespeare Company before embarking on a career in film in the mid-1980s. Her early film work included several film roles for director Derek Jarman, notably War Requiem (1989) playing a nurse opposite Sir 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.

Swinton gained great artistic acclaim for a period in 1995 when she developed a performance/installation art piece in which as a live exhibit in the Serpentine Gallery, London, 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 often erroneously credited to Cornelia Parker, whom Swinton invited to collaborate for the installation in London. The following year, the performance, entitled The Maybe, was repeated at the Museo Barracco in Rome. She also appeared in the music video for Orbital's "The Box". She has collaborated with the fashion designers Viktor & Rolf who refer to her as more than a muse. 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."^[5]

Recent years have seen Swinton move towards more mainstream projects, including the leading role in the well-reviewed American film The Deep End (2001), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award. She appeared as a supporting character in films such as The Beach (2000), featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, and Vanilla Sky (2001) with Tom Cruise and, as the scheming 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.

Swinton at the 2008 British Academy Film Awards.

In 2005, Swinton's performance as the sinister, seductive villainess, the White Witch Jadis, in the film version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe garnered critical praise. Tilda later had a cameo in the film's sequel. So did her portrayal of Audrey Cobb in the Mike Mills film adaptation of the novel Thumbsucker.

Swinton's performance as Karen Crowder in Michael Clayton also drew favorable reviews, for which she earned her second Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. After winning a BAFTA award in the same category at the 61st British Academy Film Awards, Swinton won an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role at the 80th Academy Awards, the film's sole win.^[6][7][8] Swinton's appearance at the Oscars was remarkable in that she chose to wear very little makeup, though she did wear a silk Lanvin gown.^[9] Of Swinton's au naturel appearance, friend and sometimes stylist Jerry Stafford remarked, “This is skin born of the Scottish highlands, so why hide it? Why the hell put foundation on it and all this garish lipstick?”^[10]

Swinton next appeared in the newest 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."^[11]

Personal life

Swinton lives in Nairn, in the Highland area of Scotland, with Scottish painter John Byrne, the father of her twins, Xavier and Honor. She travels with her partner Sandro Kopp, a German/New Zealand painter,^[12] while continuing her live-in relationship with Byrne platonically. She has been with Kopp since 2004 and the relationship has Byrne's blessing.^[13] In an interview, Swinton commented on her somewhat peculiar domestic situation:^[14]

In August 2006 she opened the new Screen Academy Scotland production centre in Edinburgh.^[15]

On July 2008 she founded the Ballerina Ballroom Cinema Of Dreams,^[16] a whimsical, glamour-free, purely cinephile film festival. The event took place in a ballroom in Nairn in the Scottish Highlands in August.

Awards

Main article: List of Tilda Swinton awards and nominations

Filmography

References

External links

• Tilda Swinton at the Internet Movie Database
• BFI: Tilda Swinton
• Tilda Swinton: A Life in Pictures, BAFTA webcast, 27 November 2007
• From The Guardian
• From BBC (2004)
• From NarniaWeb (2005)
• From Dark Horizons (2005)