Tilda Swinton - Actresses

Summary

"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.

Biography

Early life

Tilda Swinton was born in London, the daughter of Lady Judith Balfour (née Killen), a native of Australia, and Sir John Swinton of Swinton, a Scottish major-general in the Scots Guards and former head of the Queen's Household Division.http://www.tiscali.co.uk/entertainment/film/biographies/tilda_swinton_biog/3http://www.swintonfamilysociety.org/web%20charts%20Jan%202005/Swint%20Ch.01-3/SWINTON_Ch02B_Sh2.pdf 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.http://observer.guardian.co.uk/magazine/story/0,11913,1587905,00.html 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 "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" garnered critical praise as did her portrayal of Audrey Cobb in the Mike Mills film adaptation of the novel "Thumbsucker".