The actor makes an instant impression at the age of 26
‘Tall and pale with long red-gold hair’, the other-worldly Tilda Swinton was preparing for a suitably alien role when the Observer met her in 1987: ‘An extremely glamorous replica of a human being, a robot from outer space called Friendship.’
At only 26, Swinton already had stints at the RSC, the National and in Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio behind her, but although she loved acting, she did not want ‘to become an actor’. It was a profession, she said, that ‘means having low self-esteem and being paranoid… A theatre runs more smoothly when the actors are kept in their place.’ That sat poorly with Swinton who, along with her three brothers, had been ‘brought up to know we could do anything’. That included following her three years at Cambridge with an ‘illegal’ stint in South Africa, working in a Black township, before returning to acting.
