Trivia

Funded and held her own very successful Film Festival in her small Scottish highland home-town: The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams. A purely cinephile, glamour-free community event. For eight and a half days in August 2008, she personally introduced and showed an eclectic mix of classics and rare films from around the world. The admission price was 3 pounds for adults, 2 pounds for children or a plate of home-baked cakes.

Spent two years in South Africa and Kenya as a voluntary worker in children's schools, before studying at Cambridge.

Her family and Clan Swinton is one of the oldest in Scotland.

Daughter of Major-General Sir John Swinton of Clan Swinton, whose ancestral home has been within the family since the 9th century.

Gave birth to twins, a daughter named Honor Swinton Byrne and a son named Xavier Byrne, on October 6, 1997.

Learned how to speak Italian and Russian for I Am Love (2009).

On her days off from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), she could be seen on-set, offering encouragement to her young co-stars.

Attended West Heath Girls' School, with Princess Diana as one of her classmates, and later Fettes College.

She has Scottish, English and Northern Irish ancestry. She can trace some of her patrilineal ancestry back 35 generations, to the 9th century. Her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton of Clan Swinton, is the former Head of The Queen's Household Division and Lord-Lieutenant of Berwickshire.

Moscow, Russia: Risked arrest waving a rainbow flag in front of the Kremlin in violation of Russia's new homosexual propaganda bill, and posting it widely in social media. (July 2013)

Does not always play women; she has played Mozart on stage, an Elizabethan nobleman in Orlando (1992) and an androgynous angel, Gabriel, in Constantine (2005).

Was offered to play Prof. Sybil Trelawney on Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004), but role went to Emma Thompson.

Initially, she didn't want to do A Bigger Splash (2015). Not this movie nor others, due to the recent death of her mother, she ended up changing her mind and at a moment in her own life when she was all out of words, she proposed the idea of this woman unable to speak.

She was the first non-director to be have a Film Benefit Gala held in her honor at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The event took place on her 53rd birthday, November 5th, 2013 and was hosted by Karl Lagerfeld, Wes Anderson and David Bowie.

She has twice played characters who were males in the original comic book: Gabriel in Constantine (2005) and The Ancient One in Doctor Strange (2016).

Her favorite films are School of Rock (2003), Au hasard Balthazar (1966), Brüno (2009), I Know Where I'm Going! (1945), Let the Right One In (2008), and Bag of Rice (1996).

Functioned as the muse and mascot of Dutch fashion designers Viktor and Rolf (Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren), who made an entire collection inspired by her (2003).

In her acceptance speech, she said she would give the Oscar she won for Michael Clayton (2007) to her agent Brian Swardstrom.

She stated that her beauty and fashion icons are her grandmother, David Bowie, her children, Patti Smith and Delphine Seyrig.

Mother is Australian.

Lives 16 miles east of Inverness in Nairn, Scotland, with her partner Sandro Kopp (an artist of some note) and her children, Xavier and Honor Swinton Byrne, whose father is Scottish painter and playwright John Byrne.

Swinton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Marion Cotillard, Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Daniel Brühl, Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams are the only actors to receive a Golden Globe, SAG, BAFTA and Critics' Choice Award nomination for the same performance and then fail to be Oscar-nominated for it: for their performances in We Need to Talk About Kevin (2011), The Departed (2006), Rust and Bone (2012), Saving Mr. Banks (2013), Captain Phillips (2013), Rush (2013), Nightcrawler (2014) and Arrival (2016), respectively.

Since 2004, she has been in a relationship with Sandro Kopp, a painter from New Zealand.

Performed live with Patti Smith on four nights of the 2005 London Meltdown Festival reading texts by Susan Sontag, Bertolt Brecht, William Blake and William S. Burroughs.

Received a 90-minute tribute at the 2008 AFI (American Film Institute) Festival.

Reached great artistic acclaim through her art installation/performance piece "The Maybe", for which she lay sleeping in a glass case on public display for a week, once at the Sepentine Gallery in London and once at the Museo Barracco in Rome. The piece is often erroneously credited to artist Cornelia Parker, whom Swinton invited to collaborate for the installation in London (1995).

Lived in Germany when she was a child because her father was posted there.

She was heavily pregnant with her twins during filming Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998). She had to be filmed from the waist up.

The father of her children, John Byrne, is a Scottish artist and writer. They were together from around 1989 to 2003.

Her paternal great-grandfather was Scottish politician and herald George Swinton of Clan Swinton, and her maternal great-great-grandfather was Scottish botanist John Hutton Balfour of Clan Balfour.

Was declared one of the ten best dressed women in the world by Vanity Fair in 2007.

Contributed vocals on four tracks of the album 'The Bachelor' by glam-goth-folk singer/songwriter Patrick Wolf.

Has three brothers.

As of 2019, she has been in 3 films that were Oscar nominated for Best Picture: Michael Clayton (2007), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014).

Is good friends with Amy Schumer.

Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 57th Cannes International Film Festival in 2004.

Has appeared in three movies with Ralph Fiennes: The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), A Bigger Splash (2015) and Hail, Caesar! (2016).

Tilda Swinton and director 'Mark Cousins' carried a 33.5-tonne portable cinema across the Scotland Highlands to bring cinema around the country. Titled 'Pilgrimage: A Scottish Road Movie Festival', which became one of the central parts of the documentary 'Cinema Is Everywhere (2011)'.

Was the 131st actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Michael Clayton (2007) at The 80th Annual Academy Awards (2008) on February 24, 2008.

Was the original choice for the role of Dr. Serena Kogan/Skynet in Terminator Salvation (2009), however Helena Bonham Carter was cast instead.

Counts Welsh actor Roger Livesey as her cinematic crush who also appeared in her all-time favorite film I Know Where I'm Going! (1945).

Member of the 'Official Competition' jury at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival in 1988.

Delivered the seminal State of Cinema Address in 2006 at the San Francisco International Film Festival, discussing the relationship of dreams, inarticulacy and film.

Never planned to be an actress until she saw Robert Bresson's Au hasard Balthazar (1966) in which a donkey's cute performance filled her with acting aspirations.

As of 2022, she has had 10 films in the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival, and a total of 15 films screened at the festival.

While at Cambridge University, she appeared in student productions of plays such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "The Duchess of Malfi" and "The Comedy of Errors".

She stated her interest in appearing in a movie directed by Alain Resnais.

Considers Delphine Seyrig a major influence. She stated her role in the musical video David Bowie: The Stars (Are Out Tonight) (2013) was meant as an homage to the actress' performance in India Song (1975).

In the top ten of the 2008 International Best-Dressed List.

Has been directed by Luca Guadagnino in five productions: The Protagonists (1999), Tilda Swinton: The Love Factory (2002), I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015) and Suspiria (2018). Together they also created the concept of the short film Here (2012).