Post by avalon on Jan 30, 2008 4:33:49 GMT 9.5
TILDA IS HUGE! 
HVE A GREAT TUESDAY
AVALON
"Centaur stage for reluctant star"
PROFILE: TILDA SWINTON
• "I'm very often referred to as 'Sir' in elevators and such. I think it has to do with being this tall and not wearing much lipstick."
IN A market crowded with bland celebrities, Tilda Swinton has always cut a singular swathe. At 47, she's an Oscar nominee who has never watched the Oscars; a star feted in Hollywood who says that thinking about her career "makes me want to run off and farm pigs".
With a touch of the head girl about her – a position she held at her English boarding school – Swinton is smart, charming and slightly scary; a bohemian who dodges interviews, possibly because of her tendency towards candour. Recently, for instance, she startled fans and scandalised tabloids by revealing that she and playwright-painter John Byrne have an open relationship.
At their home in Nairn, Swinton and Byrne raise their 10-year-old twins together, but when Swinton goes globetrotting, she does so in the company of Sandro Kopp, 29, a German artist based in New Zealand, who worked as an extra on The Lord Of The Rings series and on Swinton's Chronicles Of Narnia, as a centaur.
It sounds like a complicated family dynamic, one potentially ripe for tension, but if it is, Swinton is not giving anything away and remains fiercely loyal to Byrne, who she describes as a "phenomenal father".
"We are the best of pals and adore being parents and are devoted to that project. We ostensibly live in the same house, but I travel the world with another, delightful painter. The arrangement is just so sane."
An art-house icon, Swinton was initially known for another lengthy artistic partnership with British independent filmmaker Derek Jarman, who cast her in Caravaggio because of her similarity to the women in the painter's work. Jarman went on to become one of her best friends, making seven films with her and privately training his Super-8 camera on Swinton for seven years, until his death from Aids-related illnesses in 1994.
Her other early film roles included a potent gender-blending performance in Orlando, about a young nobleman who becomes a woman, and by the mid-nineties she had turned herself into a fully-fledged work of art by sleeping fully-clothed in a glass case at the Serpentine gallery in London for a week. Called The Maybe, it was a work – so the gallery explained – that explored the enigma of mortality, although the enigma's sleep was frequently disturbed by visitors knocking on the glass case in an attempt to wake her up.
Swinton's family background is an interesting contrast with the transgressive work she does on screen and in glass coffins. Her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton of Kimmerghame, former head of the Queen's Household Division, is able to trace his lineage back to 897. "Everyone comes from an old family," Swinton remarked dismissively. "It's just my family wrote everything down. And, also, were very lazy and stayed in the same place."
Katherine Matilda Swinton spent her early years in some of the most aristocratic educational institutions Britain has to offer: she shed her Scottish accent at West Heath Girls' School in Sevenoaks, Kent, where fellow pupils included Diana Spencer. Despite rising to the position of head girl, it seems the experience for Swinton was not a wholly pleasant one. "I come from the type of background where it was the habit for parents to send their offspring away to get them nice and tough and cold. I honestly believe it is a form of child abuse, especially when they are sent away at seven."
Nevertheless, it was also this experience that shaped her desire to perform. Aged 10, she learnt to hold back tears on a train headed for school. "Suddenly I was aware that nobody on the train would be able to know how miserable I felt because I wasn't showing it, and I remember being very fascinated by that and imagining a life doing that."
A certain bolshiness in her make-up also materialised by the time she was a pupil at Fettes in Edinburgh, showing promise as a county-level sprinter until she heard two teachers haggling over which trial she should run in, immediately feigned a sprain and never ran again.
Tricky, although not truculent, Swinton was a member of what used to be the Communist party (now the Democratic Left). She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company after Cambridge, but quit after a year, complaining it treated actors "like paper knickers".
Byrne and Swinton met in 1985 when he designed the set of a play she was appearing in at the Traverse Theatre, and five years later they fell in love when she played the stroppy, butch cowgirl in his Tutti Frutti follow-up, Your Cheatin' Heart. Byrne left his wife and they settled into a life of relatively genteel poverty in London before upping sticks for Tain and now Nairn. "I should have done it earlier because I was never happy in London. I lived like a refugee," she said. "I was completely alienated."
Before her children, Xavier and Honor, turned school age, Swinton worked sporadically in low-budget films, and occupied herself in unusual ways. About five years ago, she spent a whole horse-racing season trying to become a professional gambler. But although she enjoyed the buzz, she realised that winning money wasn't her thing.
An androgynous beauty who never wears makeup ("I'm lazy"), doesn't have a TV, and doesn't answer work e-mails or calls when she's home, she was reluctant to take a speculative tour of Los Angeles' agents in 2000, and then astonished by the mainstream offers she attracted. If set the task to come up with her least likely role, it's doubtful if anyone would have dared to imagine her seducing Leonardo DiCaprio in Danny Boyle's The Beach. The two actors shared a few trials, including a canoe scene where they capsized in rough, open seas off Thailand and it was 10 minutes before they were rescued.
She has gone on to star with Keanu Reeves in Constantine and Thumbsucker, and Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky, and set a benchmark in patience in Young Adam with Ewan McGregor, an existential, sensual thriller adapted from Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi's novel in which a fly was encouraged to land on her nipple during filming using honey.
For her Oscar-nominated role in Michael Clayton, she "ate an awful lot of pie" in order to show a lawyer who was spiritually and corporeally corrupt. Most recently, she wrapped the Joel and Ethan Coen comedy Burn After Reading, in which she reunites with her Michael Clayton sparring partner George Clooney, here playing his lover.
She still sounds queasy about referring to herself as a film star, let alone a potential Oscar winner next month. "I'm honestly not very interested in talking about it or hearing people talk about it," she says. "So I've never bothered to construct very articulate thoughts about it."
You've been googled
"We're amicably living together in the same house, under the same roof. It's extraordinary. We lov
e each other too, in an extraordinary way." John Byrne, inset, talks about his domestic arrangements with Swinton.
• Swinton's corset was so tight in The Chronicles Of Narnia blockbuster that she had to be propped upright between takes.
• "I find it quite scandalous that there's a conspiracy of silence about how hard it is to be a mother. I don't just mean the workload… I mean what hard work it is to accept yourself as a mother. I'm not saying that I don't feel natural about motherhood. But I'm still waiting for their real parents to pick them up."
• "She would rather be back home in Scotland in her wellies, out in the garden, but is professional enough to be able to live a double life" – her brother, Willie Swinton.
The full article contains 1324 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
Last Updated: 26 January 2008 5:20 PM
HVE A GREAT TUESDAY
AVALON
"Centaur stage for reluctant star"
PROFILE: TILDA SWINTON
• "I'm very often referred to as 'Sir' in elevators and such. I think it has to do with being this tall and not wearing much lipstick."
IN A market crowded with bland celebrities, Tilda Swinton has always cut a singular swathe. At 47, she's an Oscar nominee who has never watched the Oscars; a star feted in Hollywood who says that thinking about her career "makes me want to run off and farm pigs".
With a touch of the head girl about her – a position she held at her English boarding school – Swinton is smart, charming and slightly scary; a bohemian who dodges interviews, possibly because of her tendency towards candour. Recently, for instance, she startled fans and scandalised tabloids by revealing that she and playwright-painter John Byrne have an open relationship.
At their home in Nairn, Swinton and Byrne raise their 10-year-old twins together, but when Swinton goes globetrotting, she does so in the company of Sandro Kopp, 29, a German artist based in New Zealand, who worked as an extra on The Lord Of The Rings series and on Swinton's Chronicles Of Narnia, as a centaur.
It sounds like a complicated family dynamic, one potentially ripe for tension, but if it is, Swinton is not giving anything away and remains fiercely loyal to Byrne, who she describes as a "phenomenal father".
"We are the best of pals and adore being parents and are devoted to that project. We ostensibly live in the same house, but I travel the world with another, delightful painter. The arrangement is just so sane."
An art-house icon, Swinton was initially known for another lengthy artistic partnership with British independent filmmaker Derek Jarman, who cast her in Caravaggio because of her similarity to the women in the painter's work. Jarman went on to become one of her best friends, making seven films with her and privately training his Super-8 camera on Swinton for seven years, until his death from Aids-related illnesses in 1994.
Her other early film roles included a potent gender-blending performance in Orlando, about a young nobleman who becomes a woman, and by the mid-nineties she had turned herself into a fully-fledged work of art by sleeping fully-clothed in a glass case at the Serpentine gallery in London for a week. Called The Maybe, it was a work – so the gallery explained – that explored the enigma of mortality, although the enigma's sleep was frequently disturbed by visitors knocking on the glass case in an attempt to wake her up.
Swinton's family background is an interesting contrast with the transgressive work she does on screen and in glass coffins. Her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton of Kimmerghame, former head of the Queen's Household Division, is able to trace his lineage back to 897. "Everyone comes from an old family," Swinton remarked dismissively. "It's just my family wrote everything down. And, also, were very lazy and stayed in the same place."
Katherine Matilda Swinton spent her early years in some of the most aristocratic educational institutions Britain has to offer: she shed her Scottish accent at West Heath Girls' School in Sevenoaks, Kent, where fellow pupils included Diana Spencer. Despite rising to the position of head girl, it seems the experience for Swinton was not a wholly pleasant one. "I come from the type of background where it was the habit for parents to send their offspring away to get them nice and tough and cold. I honestly believe it is a form of child abuse, especially when they are sent away at seven."
Nevertheless, it was also this experience that shaped her desire to perform. Aged 10, she learnt to hold back tears on a train headed for school. "Suddenly I was aware that nobody on the train would be able to know how miserable I felt because I wasn't showing it, and I remember being very fascinated by that and imagining a life doing that."
A certain bolshiness in her make-up also materialised by the time she was a pupil at Fettes in Edinburgh, showing promise as a county-level sprinter until she heard two teachers haggling over which trial she should run in, immediately feigned a sprain and never ran again.
Tricky, although not truculent, Swinton was a member of what used to be the Communist party (now the Democratic Left). She joined the Royal Shakespeare Company after Cambridge, but quit after a year, complaining it treated actors "like paper knickers".
Byrne and Swinton met in 1985 when he designed the set of a play she was appearing in at the Traverse Theatre, and five years later they fell in love when she played the stroppy, butch cowgirl in his Tutti Frutti follow-up, Your Cheatin' Heart. Byrne left his wife and they settled into a life of relatively genteel poverty in London before upping sticks for Tain and now Nairn. "I should have done it earlier because I was never happy in London. I lived like a refugee," she said. "I was completely alienated."
Before her children, Xavier and Honor, turned school age, Swinton worked sporadically in low-budget films, and occupied herself in unusual ways. About five years ago, she spent a whole horse-racing season trying to become a professional gambler. But although she enjoyed the buzz, she realised that winning money wasn't her thing.
An androgynous beauty who never wears makeup ("I'm lazy"), doesn't have a TV, and doesn't answer work e-mails or calls when she's home, she was reluctant to take a speculative tour of Los Angeles' agents in 2000, and then astonished by the mainstream offers she attracted. If set the task to come up with her least likely role, it's doubtful if anyone would have dared to imagine her seducing Leonardo DiCaprio in Danny Boyle's The Beach. The two actors shared a few trials, including a canoe scene where they capsized in rough, open seas off Thailand and it was 10 minutes before they were rescued.
She has gone on to star with Keanu Reeves in Constantine and Thumbsucker, and Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky, and set a benchmark in patience in Young Adam with Ewan McGregor, an existential, sensual thriller adapted from Scottish beat writer Alexander Trocchi's novel in which a fly was encouraged to land on her nipple during filming using honey.
For her Oscar-nominated role in Michael Clayton, she "ate an awful lot of pie" in order to show a lawyer who was spiritually and corporeally corrupt. Most recently, she wrapped the Joel and Ethan Coen comedy Burn After Reading, in which she reunites with her Michael Clayton sparring partner George Clooney, here playing his lover.
She still sounds queasy about referring to herself as a film star, let alone a potential Oscar winner next month. "I'm honestly not very interested in talking about it or hearing people talk about it," she says. "So I've never bothered to construct very articulate thoughts about it."
You've been googled
"We're amicably living together in the same house, under the same roof. It's extraordinary. We lov
e each other too, in an extraordinary way." John Byrne, inset, talks about his domestic arrangements with Swinton.
• Swinton's corset was so tight in The Chronicles Of Narnia blockbuster that she had to be propped upright between takes.
• "I find it quite scandalous that there's a conspiracy of silence about how hard it is to be a mother. I don't just mean the workload… I mean what hard work it is to accept yourself as a mother. I'm not saying that I don't feel natural about motherhood. But I'm still waiting for their real parents to pick them up."
• "She would rather be back home in Scotland in her wellies, out in the garden, but is professional enough to be able to live a double life" – her brother, Willie Swinton.
The full article contains 1324 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
Last Updated: 26 January 2008 5:20 PM
