BANG Showbiz English
Tilda Swinton believes identity is “entirely flexible”.
The 61-year-old actress – who has 23-year-old twins Honor and Xavier with former partner John Byrne and is in a relationship with Sandro Kopp – doesn’t want to be confined to a “box” and enjoys changing who she is on any given day.
She told Total Film magazine: “For myself, I feel most relaxed when I think that identity is something entirely flexible, that we can choose at any moment, and that it’s nobody’s business, what we choose on any given day, but ours.
“It seems a bit of a waste to just put oneself in a box and cut off all one’s limbs.
“For me, it’s never been more interesting than to stay as flexible as possible and to just play.”
61
In her upcoming movie ‘Memoria’, Tilda plays Jessica, who wakes one day disturbed by a sound in her head and the actress was able to channel her grief for her father, who passed away in October 2018, into the character because of how “alien” she felt.
She told the new issue of Total Film magazine: “I think a lot of people who suffer bereavement experience this sense of disconnection and limbo.
“That limbo is quite a run-of-the-mill – not exotic – experience for human beings.
“But it does make us feel alien when we’re in that scenario.
“Hang on, society is going out there and I’m just not connecting, my battery is not plugged in. So we did talk about that.
“We talked about what it is to have that access to feeling alien and how humane it is.”
The ‘Doctor Strange’ star revealed last year she identifies as queer and has found family in her professional collaborators.
She said: “’I’m very clear that queer is actually, for me anyway, to do with sensibility.
“I always felt I was queer – I was just looking for my queer circus, and I found it. And having found it, it’s my world.
“Now I have a family with Wes Anderson, I have a family with Bong Joon-ho, I have a family with Jim Jarmusch, I have a family with Luca Guadagnino, with Lynne Ramsay, with Joanna Hogg.”
