TILDA SWINTON

'Katherine Mathilda Swinton' (born November 5 1960), better known as 'Tilda Swinton', is a Golden Globe Award-nominated British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films.

Contents

Biography

Early life

Career

Personal life

Filmography

References

External links

Biography

Early life

Tilda Swinton was born in London, daughter of Sir John Swinton of Swinton, a Scottish major-general in the Scots Guards and former head of the Queen's Household Division, and his Australian-born wife, Lady Judith Balfour Killen.^[1][2] She also has relatives in the towns of Monkseaton and Newcastle. The Swinton family is an ancient Anglo-Scots family that can trace its lineage to the ninth century.^[3] Swinton attended West Heath Girls' School (the same school as Diana, Princess of Wales), and also Fettes College for a brief period. In 1983, she graduated from New Hall at Cambridge University with a degree in the social and political sciences.

Career

Carving out an international reputation as a risk taker, she has always eschewed conventional leading lady roles. She worked with the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, and the Royal Shakespeare Company before embarking on a career in film in the mid-1980s. Her late film work included several film roles for director Derek Jarman, and also the title role in ''Orlando'', Sally Potter's film version of the novel by Virginia Woolf.
Swinton became notorious for a brief period in 1995 when she appeared 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 by Cornelia Parker. The following year, the performance, entitled ''The Maybe'', was repeated at a gallery in Rome. She appeared in the music video for Orbital's "The Box".
Recent years have seen her 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 the scheming archangel Gabriel in ''Constantine'' with Keanu Reeves, as a supporting character in films such as ''Vanilla Sky'' with Tom Cruise, and ''The Beach'', featuring Leonardo DiCaprio. Swinton has also appeared in British films: ''The Statement'' (2003) and ''Young Adam'' (2004), and sat on the jury of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.
In 2005, her performance as the sinister, seductive villainess, the White Witch Jadis, in the film version of '' garnered critical praise as did her portrayal of Audrey Cobb in the Mike Mills film adaptation of the novel ''Thumbsucker''.

Personal life

Swinton lives in Nairn in the north of Scotland with her husband John Byrne, an artist. She has two children, Xavier Byrne and Honor Byrne.

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
1986	''Egomania - Insel ohne Hoffnung''	Sally
	""	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''
1990	"Your Cheatin' Heart"	Cissie Crouch	TV series
	''The Garden''	Madonna
1989	''Play Me Something''	Hairdresser	TV
	''War Requiem''	Nurse
1991	''Edward II''	Isabella
	''	Queenie
1992	""	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	''
	''Visions of Heaven and Hell''	Narrator	TV
1996	''Female Perversions''	Eve Stephens
1997	''Conceiving Ada''	Ada Augusta Byron King, Countess of Lovelace
1998	''	Muriel Belcher
1999	''The War Zone''	Mum
2000	''Possible Worlds''	Joyce
	''The Beach''	Sal
2001	''Vanilla Sky''	Rebecca Dearborn
	''The Deep End''	Margaret Hall
2002	''Adaptation''	Valerie Thomas
	''Teknolust''	Rosetta/Ruby/Marinne/Olive
2003	''The Statement''	Annemarie Livi
	''Young Adam''	Ella Gault
2005	''	Jadis, the White Witch
	''Broken Flowers''	Penny
	''Constantine''	Angel Gabriel
	''Thumbsucker''	Audrey Cobb
2006	''Stephanie Daley''	Lydie Crane
2007	''The Man from London''		Pre-production
	''		Filming
	''Michael Clayton''	Karen Hauer	Post-production
	''The Curious Case of Benjamin Button''
2008	''Come Like Shadows''	Lady Macbeth	Pre-production

References

1. http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/tilda_swinton_biog/3
2. http://www.swintonfamilysociety.org/web%20charts%20Jan%202005/Swint%20Ch.01-3/SWINTON_Ch02B_Sh2.pdf
3. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1587905,00.html

External links

★

★ Tilda Swinton Fansite

★ BFI: Tilda Swinton

★ From ''The Guardian''

★ From ''BBC'' (2004)

★ From ''NarniaWeb'' (2005)

★ From ''Dark Horizons'' (2005)