Tilda Swinton

Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton

5 November 1960


An Emglish actress and fashion muse known for both arthouse and mainstream films. 

Swinton attended three independent schools, Queen's Gate School in London, the West Heath Girls' Schooland 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.

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". 

In 2007 she won both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance as lawyer Karen Crowder in "Michael Clayton".

As actress

• Egomania – Insel ohne Hoffnung (1986)
• Caravaggio (1986)
• Aria (1987)
• Friendship's Death (1987)
• The Last of England (1988)
• Cycling the Frame (1988)
• Das Andere Ende der Welt (1988)
• Degrees of Blindness (1988)
• L' Ispirazione (1988)
• Play Me Something (1989)
• War Requiem (1989)
• The Garden (1990)
• Edward II (1991)
• The Party - Nature Morte (1991)
• Orlando (1992)
• Blue (1993)
• Wittgenstein (1993)
• Remembrance of Things Fast: True Stories Visual Lies (1994)
• Female Perversions (1996)
• Conceiving Ada (1997)
• Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998)
• The Protagonists (1998)
• Herlizeares (1998)
• The War Zone (1999)
• Possible Worlds (2000)
• The Beach (2000)
• Vanilla Sky (2001)
• The Deep End (2001)
• Adaptation (2002)
• Teknolust (2002)
• The Statement (2003)
• Young Adam (2003)
• Constantine (2005)
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005)
• Broken Flowers (2005)
• Thumbsucker (2005)
• Stephanie Daley (2006)
• Sleepwalkers (2007)
• Strange Culture (2007)
• The Man from London (2007)
• Michael Clayton (2007)
• Julia (2008)
• The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian (2008)
• Burn After Reading (2008)
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)
• The Limits of Control (2009)
• The Invisible Frame (2009)
• I Am Love (2009)
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
• We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011)
• Moonrise Kingdom (2012)
• Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)
• When Björk Met Attenborough (2013)
• Snowpiercer (2013)
• The Zero Theorem (2013)
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)
• Trainwreck (2015)
• Hail, Caesar! (2016)
• The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger (2016)
• Doctor Strange (2016)
• Okja (2017)
• Suspiria (2017)
• War Machine (2017)
• Isle of Dogs (2018)

Quotations

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Faith is in the eye of the beholder.

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I always think of the word 'abandonment' when I think of the character.

* * *

It may be unfair of me but I do feel I know it.

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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.

* * *

What he's done is recognise the cinematic nature of the book. It's beautifully realised - it's a beat film.

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