Tilda Swinton, born 1960, turns 53 today. A recent favorite of Roger Ebert, she’s attended his annual Ebertfest twice, this year leading the audience in a conga line through the infamous Virginia Theater. Aside from her charity work (such as appearing in Russia earlier this year holding a rainbow flag and her traveling film festival in the Scottish highlands in 2009, where she literally pulled a rickshaw full of film equipment around) Swinton has been a fixture of both independent film and mainstream film for much of the last 20 years.
She got her start with an education at Cambridge and the Royal Shakespeare Company, but first came to light on movie screens through the work of Derek Jarman, appearing in films such as Caravaggio, War Requiem and Edward II, the latter of which won her the Best Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival. Her American independent breakthrough was in Sally Potter’s Orlando, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf. That film, in which she played an androgynous character throughout many time periods, established her fluidity as both an actress and a character. She appeared in several other independent films throughout the 90s, such as Tim Roth’s The War Zone and Love Is The Devil, a film about painter Francis Bacon that also featured a pre-fame Daniel Craig.
Her mainstream work began in the 2000’s, with films such as The Beach, Vanilla Sky, Adaptation and Constantine, along with independent work in films like The Deep End and Young Adam. Her most prominent roles came in the middle of the decade, when she played the White Witch in the Narnia films and a corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton, the latter of which earned her an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Since her win, she’s continued to do what she always does, alternating independent fare such as Julia and We Need To Talk About Kevin with mainstream films such as Burn After Reading and Moonrise Kingdom. Next, she’ll appear in the new films from Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson.
Also born today:
Sam Rockwell (45)
Famke Janssen (48)
Robert Patrick (55)
Nestor Serano (58)
Sam Shepard (70)
One thought on “Birthday Wishes: Saint Tilda Swinton”
The fact that Tilda just did a David Bowie video earlier this year has me convinced that she should play Bowie (well one of Bowie’s personas) in a bio-pic if it ever gets made but I think playing Bowie will require other actors to take part in that role.