Tilda Swinton extracted from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License

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.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Career 1.3 Personal life 2 Awards 3 Filmography 4 References 5 External links

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.¹²³⁴ 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.

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.⁶⁷⁸ 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

“

It’s the way we have been for nearly four years. I’m very fortunate. It takes some extraordinary men to make a situation like that work.

”

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

Year	Film	Role	Notes and Awards
1986	Egomania - Insel ohne Hoffnung	Sally
	Zastrozzi: A Romance	Julia	Mini TV series
	Caravaggio	Lena
1987	Aria	Young Girl (segment "Depuis le jour")
	Friendship's Death	Friendship
1988	The Last of England
	Das Andere Ende der Welt
	Degrees of Blindness
	L' Ispirazione
1989	Play Me Something	Hairdresser	TV
	War Requiem	Nurse
1990	"Your Cheatin' Heart"	Cissie Crouch	TV series
	The Garden	Madonna
1991	Edward II	Isabella
	The Party: Nature Morte	Queenie
1992	"Shakespeare: The Animated Tales"	Ophelia	Mini TV series; voice
	Orlando	Orlando
	Man to Man	Ella/Max Gericke
1993	Blue		Voice
	Das Offene Universum	Carla	TV
	Wittgenstein	Lady Ottoline Morrell
1994	Remembrance of Things Fast: True Stories Visual Lies
	Visions of Heaven and Hell	Narrator	TV
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
	The Protagonists
1999	The War Zone	Mum
2000	Possible Worlds	Joyce
	The Beach	Sal
2001	Vanilla Sky	Rebecca Dearborn
	The Deep End	Margaret Hall	Nominated: Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture, Drama
2002	Adaptation	Valerie Thomas
	Teknolust	Rosetta/Ruby/Marinne/Olive
2003	The Statement	Annemarie Livi
	Young Adam	Ella Gault
2005	Constantine	Angel Gabriel
	The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe	Jadis, the White Witch
	Broken Flowers	Penny
	Thumbsucker	Audrey Cobb
2006	Stephanie Daley	Lydie Crane
	Galapagos	Narrator	BBC Documentary
2007	Sleepwalkers	Violinist working as a Copy Clerk
	Strange Culture	Hope Kurtz
	The Man from London	Camélia
	Michael Clayton	Karen Crowder	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress Nominated: Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture
2008	Julia	Julia
	The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian	The White Witch	Cameo
	Burn After Reading	Katie Cox
	The Curious Case of Benjamin Button	Elizabeth Abbott	awaiting release
2009	The Limits of Control	TBA	post-production
	Phantasmagoria: The Visions of Lewis Carroll	Lewis Carroll's dream wife	pre-production
	Come Like Shadows	Lady Macbeth	pre-production

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Tilda Swinton

• 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)

www.cinemaofdreams.co.uk

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls	Academy Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role 2007 for Michael Clayton	Succeeded by TBD
Preceded by Jennifer Hudson for Dreamgirls	BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actress 2008 for Michael Clayton	Succeeded by TBD

v • d • e Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress Jennifer Connelly (2001) · Catherine Zeta-Jones (2002) · Renée Zellweger (2003) · Cate Blanchett (2004) · Rachel Weisz (2005) · Jennifer Hudson (2006) · Tilda Swinton (2007) Complete list · (1928–1940) · (1941–1960) · (1961–1980) · (1981–2000) · (2001-present)

Persondata
NAME	Swinton, Tilda
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Swinton, Katherine Matilda
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Actress
DATE OF BIRTH	5 November 1960
PLACE OF BIRTH	London, England
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH