Tilda Swinton life and biography

Katherine Mathilda "Tilda" Swinton is a British actress known for both arthouse and mainstream films. She has appeared in a number of films including The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, and was nominated for a Golden Globe for her performance in The Deep End. She won the 2007 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Michael Clayton.

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 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. The part allowed Swinton to explore matters of gender presentation onscreen which reflected her life-long 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.”

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 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. 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".

Recent years have seen Swinton move towards more mainstream projects, including the leading role in the 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, 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), and sat on the jury of the 2004 Cannes Film Festival.

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 (with whom she also shared the screen in Clayton), "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 Burn After Reading co-star Brad Pitt.

She had a starring role as the irresponsible eponymous 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. Several critics praised her performance and some claimed it should have won her an Academy Award.
She stars in the new film adaptation of We Need to Talk about Kevin due for release in September 2011.
She has joined the cast of Jim Jarmusch's untitled vampire film which will shoot in early 2012.

Swinton lives in Nairn, in the Highland region of Scotland, near Scottish painter John Byrne and their twin children: a son, Xavier, and a daughter, Honor. She travels with her partner Sandro Kopp, a German/New Zealand painter.
She has been with Kopp since 2004 and the relationship has Byrne's blessing. In an interview, Swinton commented on her domestic situation: "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."

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