Early life

Swinton was born in London, the daughter of Judith Balfour (née Killen; 1929-2012) and John Swinton. She has three brothers. Her father is a Major-General, KCVO, OBE, DL, and Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire from 1989 to 2000. Her mother was Australian. Her paternal great-grandfather was a Scottish politician and herald, George Swinton, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was the Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour. The Swinton family is an ancient Anglo-Scots family that can trace its lineage to the Middle Ages. The Swinton family is one of only three families (along with the Ardens and the Berkeleys) that can trace their unbroken land ownership and lineage to before the Norman Conquest.

Swinton attended three independent schools: Queen's Gate School in London, the West Heath Girls' School and also Fettes College for a brief period. West Heath was an expensive boarding school where she was a classmate and friend of Princess Diana. Swinton went to volunteer in Kenya during a break from college. In 1983, she graduated from New Hall (now known as Murray Edwards College) at the University of Cambridge with a degree in Social and Political Sciences. While at Cambridge, she joined the Communist Party; she later joined the Scottish Socialist Party. It was in college that Swinton began performing on stage.

Early work

Swinton joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1984, appearing in Measure for Measure. She also worked with the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, starring in Mann ist Mann by Manfred Karge in 1987. On television, she appeared as Julia in the 1986 mini-series Zastrozzi: A Romance based on the Gothic novel by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Her first film was Caravaggio in 1986, directed by Derek Jarman. She went on to star in several Jarman films, including The Last of England (1987), War Requiem (1989) opposite Laurence Olivier, and Edward II (1991), for which she won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 1991 Venice Film Festival.

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."

Mainstream roles

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 played 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).

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.

She starred in the film adaptation of the novel We Need to Talk about Kevin, released in October 2011. She portrayed the mother of the title character, a teenage boy who commits a high school massacre. In 2012, she was cast in Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive, a vampire film which began filming in June 2012. She was joined by John Hurt and Tom Hiddleston. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on 23 May 2013, and was released in the US in the first half of 2014. She also played Mason in the 2014 sci-fi film Snowpiercer.

In 2015, she starred in Luca Guadagnino's thriller A Bigger Splash, opposite Matthias Schoenaerts and Ralph Fiennes.

Swinton is also set to portray the Ancient One in Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in 2016. On 23 November 2015, Luca Guadagnino revealed during an interview to Italian website Daruma View that Swinton will be in his remake of Suspiria. Shooting begins in August 2016, to be released in 2017.

Performance art

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.

Fashion

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".

In 2013, Swinton was named as one of the fifty best-dressed over 50s by The Guardian, and often appears on International Best Dressed Lists. In May 2013 it was announced that Swinton would be the face of the Chanel Pre-Fall Paris-Edinbourg collection. This collection was inspired by Scottish traditional fashion and fabrics.

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 1996, she appeared in the music video for Orbital's "The Box". 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.

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 July 2013, 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 Swinton Byrne (born 6 October 1997), lives in Edinburgh with his partner Jeanine Davies.

Filmography

Film

Year	Film	Role	Director	Notes
1986	Egomania - Insel ohne Hoffnung	Sally
1986	Caravaggio	Lena	Derek Jarman
1987	Aria	Young Girl	Derek Jarman	segment: Depuis le jour
1987	Friendship's Death	Friendship
1988	Last of England, TheThe Last of England		Derek Jarman
1988	Cycling the Frame	The Cyclist		Short
1988	Das Andere Ende der Welt
1988	Degrees of Blindness
1988	L' Ispirazione			Short
1989	Play Me Something	Hairdresser
1989	War Requiem	Nurse	Derek Jarman
1990	Garden, TheThe Garden	Madonna	Derek Jarman
1991	Edward II	Isabella	Derek Jarman
1991	Party - Nature Morte, TheThe Party - Nature Morte	Queenie
1992	Orlando	Orlando	Sally Potter
1993	Blue		Derek Jarman	Voice
1993	Wittgenstein	Lady Ottoline Morrell	Derek Jarman
1994	Remembrance of Things Fast: True Stories Visual Lies
1996	Female Perversions	Eve Stephens	Susan Streitfeld
1997	Conceiving Ada	Ada Augusta Byron King, Countess of Lovelace	Lynn Hershman Leeson
1998	Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon	Muriel Belcher	John Maybury
1998	Protagonists, TheThe Protagonists	Actress	Marcello Fondato
1998	Herlizeares	Diera
1999	War Zone, TheThe War Zone	Mum	Tim Roth
2000	Possible Worlds	Joyce	Robert Lepage
2000	Beach, TheThe Beach	Sal	Danny Boyle
2001	Vanilla Sky	Rebecca Dearborn	Cameron Crowe
2001	Deep End, TheThe Deep End	Margaret Hall	Scott McGehee & David Siegel
2002	Adaptation	Valerie Thomas	Spike Jonze
2002	Teknolust	Rosetta/Ruby/Marinne/Olive	Lynn Hershman Leeson
2003	Statement, TheThe Statement	Annemarie Livi	Norman Jewison
2003	Young Adam	Ella Gault	David Mackenzie
2005	Constantine	Gabriel	Francis Lawrence
2005	Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, TheThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	Jadis, the White Witch	Andrew Adamson
2005	Absent Presence	Operator		Short
2005	Broken Flowers	Penny	Jim Jarmusch
2005	Thumbsucker	Audrey Cobb	Mike Mills
2006	Stephanie Daley	Lydie Crane	Hilary Brougher
2007	Sleepwalkers	Violinist	Mick Garris	Short
2007	Faceless			Voice
2007	Strange Culture	Hope Kurtz	Lynn Hershman Leeson	Documentary
2007	Man from London, TheThe Man from London	Camélia	Béla Tarr & Ágnes Hranitzky
2007	Michael Clayton	Karen Crowder	Tony Gilroy
2008	Julia	Julia	Erick Zonca
2008	Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, TheThe Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian	Jadis, the White Witch; Centaur	Andrew Adamson	Cameo
2008	Burn After Reading	Katie Cox	Joel Coen Ethan Coen
2008	Curious Case of Benjamin Button, TheThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button	Elizabeth Abbott	David Fincher
2008	Derek	Narrator	Isaac Julien	Documentary
2009	Limits of Control, TheThe Limits of Control	Blonde	Jim Jarmusch
2009	The Invisible Frame	The Cyclist
2009	I Am Love	Emma Recchi	Luca Guadagnino
2010	Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, TheThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader	Jadis, the White Witch	Michael Apted
2011	We Need to Talk About Kevin	Eva Khatchadourian	Lynne Ramsay
2011	Genevieve Goes Boating	Narrator		Video short
2012	Moonrise Kingdom	Social Services	Wes Anderson
2013	The Stars (Are Out Tonight)	David Bowie's wife		Cameo
2013	Only Lovers Left Alive	Eve	Jim Jarmusch
2013	When Björk Met Attenborough	Narrator	Louise Hooper	Documentary
2013	Snowpiercer	Mason	Bong Joon-ho
2013	The Zero Theorem	Dr Shrink-Rom	Terry Gilliam
2014	The Grand Budapest Hotel	Madame Celine Villeneuve Desgoffe-und-Taxis	Wes Anderson
2015	Trainwreck	Dianna	Judd Apatow
2015	A Bigger Splash	Marianne	Luca Guadagnino
2016	Hail, Caesar!	Thora Thacker/Thessaly Thacker	Joel Coen Ethan Coen
2016	The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger	Herself	Bartek Dziadosz, Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth, Tilda Swinton	Documentary
2016	Doctor Strange	Ancient One	Scott Derrickson	Post-production
2017	Okja		Bong Joon-ho	Filming

Television

Year	Film	Role	Notes
1986	Zastrozzi: A Romance	Julia	TV miniseries
1986-1990	The Open Universe	Carla
1990	Your Cheatin' Heart	Cissie Crouch	TV series (6 episodes)
1992	Shakespeare: The Animated Tales	Ophelia (voice)	TV miniseries
1992	Screenplay	Ella/Max Gericke	TV series (1 episode: "Man to Man")
1994	Visions of Heaven and Hell	Narrator	TV series
2005	The Somme	Narrator	TV movie
2006	Galápagos	Narrator	BBC Documentary

Awards and nominations

Main article: List of awards and nominations received by Tilda Swinton

[ Source: Wikipedia ]