Hollywood's Exquisite Alien

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images The famously otherworldly and enigmatic Oscar-winning Tilda Swinton talks to Amanda Fortini about her boozy new film, the joys of her open relationship, and why she would rather be a poet.

Tilda Swinton is a paradox, a contradiction, a still point at which opposites converge. Her chameleon face is at once Victorian and futuristic, extraterrestrial yet earthly—her finely etched features appear to be carved out of clay. From one angle she is a handsome, somewhat masculine woman. From another, a handsome, slightly effete man. She seems to straddle time, eras. She often looks ageless; at other moments, all of her 48 years. It is likely this protean quality that has made her a favorite of directors—the Coen brothers, David Fincher, Danny Boyle, and Jim Jarmusch, among others—who no doubt understand her power to seduce an audience: Viewers want to watch her, to solve the puzzle of her face.

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On a recent Friday evening, at that dusky hour when the light turns blue, Tilda Swinton sits poolside at a table at the Avalon, a retro-chic hotel in Beverly Hills. “Are you cold? I just want it a bit warmer, if that’s possible,” she says, in a clipped British accent, angling a heat lamp toward her chair with one long elegant arm. She orders ginger ale and grenadine: a makeshift kiddie cocktail. It’s odd to hear her voice, but also her expression of human desires. Did Orlando feel cold? Did the White Witch of Narnia drink? You remind yourself that she is not some sort of fantastical being; she simply plays them in the movies.

Still, Swinton does not seem entirely of this planet. Her statuesque 5’11” form is sheathed in a gray cashmere Jil Sander sweater and a black funereal Vivien Westwood dress. Her hair, dyed pale blond, is swept back into a David Bowie-style peak. Her face is a pale canvas free of makeup. The look is androgynous, punk, regal, and out there. Some might call it (as was said of her avant-garde Lanvin Oscar get-ups) fashion-person weird.

“I have children with one person and am in a relationship with someone else. The fact that there is no acrimony… that’s the only thing that’s remotely strange, and that’s really sad—I’m sorry for everyone that it should be so rare.”

Directors have long been tapping into Swinton’s otherwordly strangeness. For a time, it seemed she might be typecast, forever playing some version of ethereal. But in recent years, she has appeared in more down-to-earth roles. A handful of directors have figured out that her alien beauty and remote aura could serve as a useful counterpoint—as a visual that wordlessly evokes the poignancy of a fine-spun character trapped by mundane circumstances. In Mike Mills’ 2005 film Thumbsucker, Swinton played Audrey Cobb, the elegant, discriminating mother of a teenager in the disorienting throes of adolescent exploration—a goddess among small-town mortals. In the 2007 film Michael Clayton, she portrayed Karen Crowder, an outwardly hard-charging but inwardly agonized attorney, and won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her work. The character’s delicate features and mannered bearing hint at her former principled self, while her lank black hair and stuffed-sausage body reveal the extent of her spiritual corruption.

Now, with next week’s release of Julia, Swinton has reached new frontier in her turn toward realism. Swinton plays the very earthy title character, a blowsy, fleshy, fortysomething alcoholic who boozes, schemes, screws, and otherwise manipulates her way through the film. “I wanted her to feel like a ruin, like a real waste,” Swinton says crisply, enunciating each word, as she tends to, with a headmistress’ precision. To prepare for the role, she put on weight by eating “all sorts of things I’m not particularly keen on—a lot of pasta and a lot of pies.” (Swinton avoids wheat because of its somnolent effects on her: “I was sort of falling asleep for the filming,” she says.) But packing on pounds was not that difficult because she had already, in her words, “porked up” for Michael Clayton.