Here is the biography of Tilda Swinton:
Tilda Swinton was born Katherine Mathilda Swinton on November 5, 1960, in London, England. Her mother, Judith Balfour, Lady Swinton, was Australian, and her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton, an army officer, was English-born. Her ancestry is Scottish, Northern Irish, and English, including a long tapestry of prominent Scottish ancestors.
She was educated at an English and a Scottish boarding school, and subsequently studied Social and Political Science at Cambridge University, graduating in 1983 with a degree in English Literature. During her tenure as a student, she performed countless stage productions and worked for a season with the Royal Shakespeare Company, where she appeared in productions such as "Measure for Measure."
After leaving the company, Swinton found gender-bending stage roles, including Mozart in Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri" and a working-class woman impersonating her dead husband during World War II in Manfred Karge's "Man to Man." She later committed to film a role in "Man to Man" (1992).
In 1985, Swinton began a professional association with gay experimental director Derek Jarman, with whom she worked for nine years, involving herself in seven of his often notorious films. This quirky alliance produced such stark and radical turns as "Caravaggio" (1986),"The Last of England" (1987),"The Garden" (1990),and "Edward II" (1991).
Jarman succumbed to complications from AIDS in 1994, leaving a devastating void in Swinton's life. Her most notable performance of her Jarman period came from a non-Jarman film, the title role in Sally Potter's "Orlando" (1992),in which her nobleman character lives for 400 years while changing sex from man to woman.
Swinton has preferred art to celebrity, opening herself to experimental projects with new and untried directors and mediums, delving into the worlds of installation art and cutting-edge fashion. She has consistently taken on off-centered roles in films such as "Female Perversions" (1996),"Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon" (1998),"Teknolust" (2002),"Young Adam" (2003),"Broken Flowers" (2005),and "Béla Tarr's The Man from London" (2007).
In the early 2000s, Swinton delved into performance art, putting herself on display in a glass case at the Serpentine Gallery in London. She has also had a number of critically acclaimed performances in Hollywood mainstream films, including "The Deep End" (2001),"The Beach" (2000),"Constantine" (2005),"Michael Clayton" (2007),and "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (2005).
In the millennium, Swinton continued to amaze, starring in the crime drama "Julia" (2008) and in David Fincher's "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" (2008). She learned Italian and Russian for Luca Guadagnino's "I Am Love" (2009),starred in the psychological thriller "We Need to Talk About Kevin" (2011),Wes Anderson's "Moonrise Kingdom" (2012),and Bong Joon Ho's "Snowpiercer" (2013).
Swinton has also had notable performances in Terry Gilliam's "The Zero Theorem" (2013),Jim Jarmusch's "Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013),Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" (2014),Judd Apatow's "Trainwreck" (2015),and Luca Guadagnino's "A Bigger Splash" (2015).
Showing no signs of slowing down, Swinton continues to make creative, visual impressions in films such as the Coen Brothers' "Hail, Caesar!" (2016),where she reunited with George Clooney, and as the wise Asian teacher of Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) in the Marvel Comics action film "Doctor Strange" (2016). She has also had roles in "Okja" (2017),"The Personal History of David Copperfield" (2019),and "The Dead Don't Die" (2019).
