TILDA Swinton is what you might call instantly recognisable. But singular looks need not detract from talent, and this is one talented actor.

Indeed, the New York Times, a newspaper, ranked her as one of the greatest actors of the 21st century. She’s won an Oscar tae.

Her latest film, out next month, is The Room Next Door, which according to the Evening Standard deals with “death, euthanasia, climate change, the religious right and the politics of division”. Not a Carry On, then. It’s an arthouse film. The colour teal features prominently.

After a showing at the Venice Film Festival, reviews have been mixed, not because euthanasia has been done to death (it’s a rare movie subject), but because Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar might have benefited from a script editor better versed in English. One critic described it as “middling Woody Allen with the contrast turned up”.

However, all agreed that Swinton was marvellous. “Monumental,” said Variety’s critic, who described her face or coupon as “so distinctive – pale and severe, expressive in a way that’s almost translucent, with that aura she conjures of looking like the aristocratic elfin alien sibling of David Bowie”. Correct.

A singular lass then. Same with the name: you don’t get many Tildas to the pound. It’s from her middle-moniker Matilda. Katherine Matilda Swinton was born on November 5, 1960 in London, the daughter of Judith Killen, an Australian from a landowning family in New South Wales, and Sir John Swinton, 7th Lord of Kimmerghame. Aye.

Her father was a major-general in the Scots Guards, and a widely respected Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire. During the Second World War, he was severely wounded twice in his left leg, despite which he saw further active service in Malaya and still enthusiastically practised Scottish country dancing.

Notable roots
Tilda’s paternal great-grandfather, George Swinton CBE,  was a Scottish politician and herald (a what now?). Her maternal great-great-grandfather was the Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour.

The Swintons can trace their family lineage to the 9th century. Swinton considers herself “first and foremost” a Scot and, worse still, a socialist.

Legend says the controversial creed’s seeds were first sown when she wondered why her pals were seated downstairs at church while the swanky Swintons were perched higher up.

Tilda attended three “independent” or money-based schools: Queen’s Gate in London, West Heath in Kent, and, briefly, Fettes College, Tony Blair’s alma nutter in Edinburgh. At West Heath, she was a classmate and friend of yon Lady Diana, the future Princess of Wales. Not known for its academic prowess, the school aimed to produce fine fillies for fabulous fellows. Tilda was the only girl in her class to take four A-Levels.

Later in life, Swinton criticised boarding schools, speaking of “a very cruel setting in which to grow up”, and describing West Heath in particular as “a very lonely and isolating environment”.

She spent two years as a volunteer in South Africa and Kenya before experiencing more suffering at Cambridge Yoonie, from which she emerged in 1983 with an honours degree in Social and Political Sciences/English Literature. While at Cambridge, she joined the Communist Party. Later, she would join the Scottish Socialist Party.

Less dramatically, she began performing on stage. In 1984, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, before going on to work with Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre.

Her first film, in 1986, was Derek Jarman’s Renaissance biopic Caravaggio. She starred in several more Jarman films, including The Last Of England (about

Britain under Margaret Thatcher), War Requiem (opposite Laurence Olivier), and Edward II (1991) as Isabella of France, for which she won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival.

The actresses' former partner, the late great John Byrne. (Image: Stewart Attwood)

Orlando in bloom
Swinton achieved wider prominence as the title character in Orlando (1992), based on Virginia Woolf’s novel about a bloke who becomes a woman for a few hundred years.

Swinton played both male and female roles, heralding an interest in androgynous style and gender depiction. She spoke of “the limitlessness of an androgynous gesture”. I see.

In 1995, at the Serpentine Gallery, London, she went on display for a week, supposedly asleep, in a glass case. Nice work if you can get it.

The work continued. Attracting Hollywood’s attention, she appeared as a supporting character in The Beach (2000), featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, before starring in The Deep End (2001) as the fiercely protective mother of a gay son she suspects of killing his boyfriend. For this performance, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award.

She was widely praised for her chilling performance as the White Witch in Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe while, in 2007, her performance as a corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton, starring George Clooney, earned her the Academy Award (Oscar) for Best Supporting Actress and a Bafta for same.

Swinton next appeared in the 2008 Coen Brothers film Burn After Reading. She played Elizabeth Abbott in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, alongside Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt, and starred in 2011’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, portraying the mother of a teenage boy who commits a high school massacre.

Swinton played the Ancient One in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in 2016’s Doctor Strange and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

Though she proudly describes herself as Scottish, citing her childhood and ancient family, in 2018, Trainspotting star Kelly Macdonald claimed Swinton was too “posh” to be Scottish and that she was “really English”. A discombobulating allegation.

Swinton responded: “I have never felt English, and I have never felt British, politically. I am happy to describe myself as Scottish and I feel, like many people, that Scotland is a naturally independent country.”

Queer sensibilities
As well as coming out for Scottish independence, Swinton has also come out, so to say, as “queer”, at least in “sensibility” or being “just odd” – “not in terms of my sexual life”. Well, there’s nowt as odd as folk.

She lives in Nairn with partner Sandro Kopp, a German painter, and has two children from a previous relationship with artist, playwright and fellow Icon of this series, John Byrne.

Swinton has sometimes talked of quitting acting to retrain as a palliative carer, partly after witnessing the loving support her parents received at the end of their lives.

We end by saying that, oddly enough, for all the sometimes weird singularity and the purposeful artistic peculiarity, Tilda Swinton comes across as a good egg – sincere, thoughtful and at least different. No bad things.