She was born Katherine Matilda Swinton on the 5th of November, 1960, in London, England to Judith (an Australian) and Sir John Swinton (a Scottish major-general in the Scots Guards). She had two older brothers, James and Alexander, with another boy, William, arriving in 1965. Her lineage was excessively impressive, the Swintons' recorded history stretching back well over a thousand years.
Cambridge-educated, Tilda worked with the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and the RSC before entering films in the mid 1980s, embarking on a rewarding association with director Derek Jarman, for whom she appeared notably in
Caravaggio (1986),
The Last of England (1987) and, as the spurned Queen Isabella, in his revisionist
Edward II (1991).
There is a unique glamour about the red-headed Swinton, a glamour that is not cosmetically derived but comes from the genuine whiff of the exotic she gives off, nowhere better seen than as the gender- and time-traversing
Orlando (UK/France/Italy/Netherlands/Russia, 1992) in Sally Potter's daring adaptation of Virginia Woolf's novel.
Her work persistently and intelligently explores aspects of women's experience of a kind and at a level of intensity unusual in commercial cinema.
To American audiences, Tilda is best known as the White Witch, Jadis, in the film version of
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. She also appeared opposite Keanu Reeves in
Constantine as the obvious-androgynous Archangel Gabriel.
Tilda resides an hour outside of Iverness, Scotland with her husband, John Byrne and their two children, Xavier and Honor.
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She was born Katherine Matilda Swinton on the 5th of November, 1960, in London, England to Judith (an Australian) and Sir John Swinton (a Scottish major-general in the Scots Guards). She had two older brothers, James and Alexander, with another boy, William, arriving in 1965. Her lineage was excessively impressive, the Swintons' recorded history stretching back well over a thousand years.
Cambridge-educated, Tilda worked with the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and the RSC before entering films in the mid 1980s, embarking on a rewarding association with director Derek Jarman, for whom she appeared notably in
Caravaggio (1986),
The Last of England (1987) and, as the spurned Queen Isabella, in his revisionist
Edward II (1991).
There is a unique glamour about the red-headed Swinton, a glamour that is not cosmetically derived but comes from the genuine whiff of the exotic she gives off, nowhere better seen than as the gender- and time-traversing
Orlando (UK/France/Italy/Netherlands/
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United Kingdom
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