For Her Next Act, Tilda Swinton Takes Off the Disguise
Tilda Swinton has always been a master of disguise. Of late, sheâs been busy playing dual roles in the likes of Suspiria and The Eternal Daughter, and experimenting with everything from extreme old-age makeup in The Grand Budapest Hotel to extreme fake teeth in Bong Joon-hoâs Okja and Snowpiercer. Even the role for which she won her Oscar, a chilly corporate attorney in Michael Clayton, was all about keeping secrets and expressing their ugly unraveling. So when Swinton tells me that, in her new film The Room Next Door, âI look like myself,â even she seems surprised. Itâs not something that sheâs used to. Nor are we: Fans have come to expect outrageous, winking, transformative work from Swinton, and over her decades on screen, sheâs delivered.
Perhaps thatâs what makes her utterly vulnerable work in The Room Next Door, Pedro AlmodĂłvarâs debut English-language feature, so particularly heartbreaking. Swinton plays Martha, a former war correspondent living with stage-three cervical cancer who enlists her longtime friend, Ingrid (Julianne Moore), to help her die on her own terms. The intimate drama just won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, setting the stage for a promising awards campaign, and showcases Swinton at her rawest and most affecting.
Room is the second Swinton film to screen over the past week. In Telluride, I saw her do something else Iâd never seen from her before: a musical. Joshua Oppenheimerâs The End enlivens a dark family tale set at the end of the world with original, Golden Age soundstage numbers. Swintonâs deeply repressed matriarch denies reality at every turn, whether through song or silence. Again, sheâs exceptional, and again, sheâs revealing something new.
Sitting with the London native in a stuffy conference room in Toronto, where both of her films are screening this week, itâs clear the decorated actor is working deeply from withinârediscovering herself as an actor along the way.
Vanity Fair: Iâve had quite a good 48 hours with your work. I saw The End in Telluride, before catching The Room Next Door back home in LA.
Tilda Swinton: Thatâs probably the right way âround, I would say. Theyâre both about the end, but [Room Next Door] is maybe more empowering. One is about self-determination and the capacity to actually take things into oneâs own hands. And the other is: Thereâs nothing to be done, basically. [Laughs]
In Telluride, Joshua Oppenheimer mentioned in his intro for The End that you could not be there because you had another film premiering in Venice at the same time. Thatâs an interesting problem to have.
Yes, very strange embarrassment of riches. I donât know if itâs an American saying, but itâs certainly a saying that I was brought up with: It never rains, but it pours. Youâre waiting for a long time and then two roles come along at the same time. They have this link in my head, so it feels absolutely right that they should both start raining at the same moment.
In Room Next Door, you develop this incredibly intimate relationship with Julianne Moore onscreen. How did you find that depth together?
For me, itâs a relative departure, actually. Itâs been a long time since Iâve worked in such collusion with another performer. The End, which was the last piece of work I made before this one, was an ensemble, and we worked closely together in a group. But thereâs something about this twosome in The Room Next Door, which was such a delicious proposal for me particularly. It was her, and it was Pedro. The thing about the film is that, to my mind, it’s a fairy story. Itâs not naturalisticâPedro doesnât even work with realism. Heâs working with a kind of elevated tone. To know that youâre sort of on high heels all the time, to find the grounding and to have a partner that you feel so connected toâit makes it all right.
Does that kind of work take you to a different place as an actor?
One of the things that Iâve been enjoying particularly well with both of these films is: Iâm a very slow burn when it comes to even thinking about performance. Iâm not really aware of much about performance, and I certainly canât talk about it. Working in improvisation with Joanna [Hogg] on the Souvenir [films] and The Eternal Daughter has definitely made me curious about finding a new way of performing with text. The End and The Room Next Door have given me the opportunity to see what I can do to work with a certain sort of grain of performance, but with a text. In improvisation, you are literally writing as you speak, which is something that I love to do. But when youâre working with a script, itâs one extra hurdle because the question is: How do you make this sound like you are literally coming up with it? As someone whoâs not versed in thinking about acting at all, itâs been a little experiment.
Are you enjoying thinking about acting more now?
Yes, I am. The Room Next Door in particular is so undisguised. Itâs a very personal film for me. I look like myself. I canât think of anything that Martha says that I couldnât say myself, or I wouldnât say myself. I have made a game out of dressing up and playing around for so many years that itâs something of an adventure. I really enjoyed making the film for that reason, just to feel that I was sinking down into something, rather than reaching up.
Is it scary?
Itâs the opposite. No, itâs a great relief.
So why have you focused more on this game, as you put it, rather than doing that kind work?
I donât know. Itâs not that Iâve been actively choosing not to do this. Itâs that I have been actively choosing to do the other thingâwith my comrades, with Bong Joon-ho, with Jim Jarmusch, with Wes Anderson. Itâs just been what Iâve been doing.
Without spoiling anything, this is also a year where you have a film in which you play two characters. Thinking of Suspiria or The Eternal Daughter, youâve been doing that a lot lately.
To be honest with you, I always did it. I mean, all the way back. I mean, even Lynn Hershman Leesonâs Teknolust from [2002]. Iâve always loved playing with the idea of making one portrait out of several identities. Although I will say that [in this yearâs case], it wasnât my suggestion. I was concerned about it. I was more concerned about it here than I had been in others. But in this, now I see, I believe it was the right decision.
You mentioned Room Next Door being personal for you, which reminds me of a few years ago, when you told The Guardian you were considering a career shift into palliative care. Am I right about that?
We were talking about COVID, and I was saying that during COVID, Iâd consideredâif we werenât going to be making any movies anymoreâdoing that training and working in palliative care. It is something that is always in my pocket, that possibility, yes.
I know youâve talked a lot about caregiving in general, so was that part of what made this film feel so personal?
It is, absolutely. I have had the privilege to be in the Ingrid position for quite a long time now. It is a blessing in my life, so to make a film about the capacity to bear witness to someone in this kind of predicament is really a particularly personal event for me.
Can you talk a little bit more about working with Julianne, in that context?
We both feel really lucky because the truth is we havenât known each other for 30 years. We are the same age, and we met each other a couple of times in passing, probably in the corridors here and said, âIâd love to hang out, letâs work together someday.â And I thought, âWell, whenever is that likely to be?â When we came to make the film, which is a film about two women who have known each other for 30, 40 years, that was actually a piece of fakery. But it was so easy to fake because it might as well be true. We fell into a very easy rhythm, and we can immediately imagine having known each other for 40 years now.
Going back to what you were saying about Pedro not working in naturalism, you also have to develop that dynamic with dialogue that is not, precisely, realistic.
Exactly, exactly. Pedro wouldnât mind me saying this to you, his hearing is not the bestâbut heâs listening for the music. He doesnât even necessarily hear what words weâre saying. I would suggest that this music is not even Spanish, thoughâitâs Pedro language, in the vibrationsâŠ. I think it would be a mistake for anglophone audiences to expect a kind of naturalistic English. This is Pedro as Spanish-speaking audiences will recognize that they donât get a kind of natural vernacular Spanish from him either. In this film, you sit down, you havenât seen somebody for 40 years, and you basically tell the story of your life. It doesnât often happen that way. [Laughs] But it does in Pedroâs movies.
The End is also not especially concerned with naturalism. You had several weeks of rehearsal, but did you feel comfortable stepping into a musical?
It was really delightful. I mean, Iâd never sung outside of a childrenâs carol concert or a university choir ever before. And it was thrilling to have lessons and have singing rehearsals and to sing in unison with my comrades. It was really, really a thrill. I loved it. All of us finding our different ways of singing, because all of us were singing differently from each other for various reasonsâwe brought all different instruments and our voices had to have different characters.
For an actor whoâs had as long and varied career as you have, itâs fascinating to hear you talk about entering uncharted territory.
Thereâs no point if it doesnât do that. Iâm talking from a selfish point of view, but itâs a very self-servingâor rather, I should say, itâs a nice thing to be curious, and itâs nice to go down a new alley and go into fresh snow. Both of them really felt very satisfying for that reason. They were both real departures. They should be a double bill.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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