"One Of The Greatest Actors Of The 21st Century"

Flipping through today's on-line Guardian, I was attracted by an interview. It focuses on questions sent by a variety of readers, including Elton John and mostly movie directors, actors, musicians and writers. The subject of the interview is an actor named by The New York Times as "one of the greatest actors of the 21st century". Yet she is almost a chameleon-like character on screen and I expect few will recall many of her many movies. My two favourites are very different - as the distraught, questioning mother in We Need To Talk About Kevin and as the elderly Madame D in Wes Anderson's hilarious The Grand Budapest Hotel. Yet she also appeared along with Leonardo di Caprio in The Beach. For her role in Michael Clayton she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress (before Actress was changed by the industry to Actor!).

In The Deep End she plays the mother of  son she believes may have killed his boyfriend.

Tilda Swinton is a fascinating character. She lives with her painter partner and her children in the north of Scotland. She loathes being called British. She is Scottish, she insists. What is perhaps most interesting is the early part of her career.  In her mid-20s after a degree at Cambridge and a short spell with the Royal Shakespeare Company, she met the openly gay designer, director and gay activist Derek Jarman. The mid-1980s saw the misery of AIDS spreading around the world, and Jarman was to become infected with HIV in 1986. The two became fast friends with Swinton appearing in nine of his movies including Caravaggio, War Requiem opposite Sir Laurence Olivier, and Edward II for which she won the Best Actress Award at the Venice Film Fetival. After a succession of budget movies made using 8mm and Super8 film - the first of which was Sebastiane based on the story of the martyrdom of the beautiful Christian St. Sebastian and deliberately aimed at  gay audience, Caravaggio became and remains one of his best-known films.

Since then Swinto has worked with some of the most acclaimed directors of our day including Pedro Almodovar, Luca Guadagnino and Boon Joon-ho. She even made a video in which she and David Bowie changed clothes. 

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/nov/12/tilda-swinton-you-ask-the-questions-pedro-almodovar-wes-anderson-elton-john