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Tilda Swinton
'I went to the Oscars as a tourist' ... Tilda Swinton. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
'I went to the Oscars as a tourist' ... Tilda Swinton. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

Winner takes it all

This article is more than 15 years old
She's the indie actor who charmed Hollywood and bagged an Oscar. She plays emotionally dysfunctional women, yet has never been more content. She has a happy home life with the father of her children - but has a boyfriend, too. Simon Hattenstone meets the contradictory Tilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton and her dog Rosy are bounding through their vegetable garden. "Look at this," Swinton shouts. She runs over with the finest broad bean I ever did see. She unpeels it and hands it to me. Gorgeous. Then she's off again. "Taste these." And they are, just about, the sweetest plums I ever did taste.

Earlier this year, a newspaper columnist suggested that Swinton was the world's most enviable woman. She had everything, Kathryn Flett wrote in the Observer - beauty, talent, success, children, a happy home life with the artist and writer John Byrne, the father of her children. And a lover. And, what's more, Byrne was happy with the arrangement. Lucky cow.

The way the tabloids played it, you would have thought they had outed Swinton. But, in fact, she had happily outed herself by turning up at the Baftas with boyfriend Sandro Kopp. Truth is she had been turning up at events for years with Kopp, but the newspapers hadn't noticed because they'd never been interested in her. Then she wins a Bafta and they all want to know about her love life.

A few weeks later, she wins an Oscar, and she's even more gossip-worthy. The tabloids pounced on Swinton, star of countless indie films and darling of the art-house cognoscenti, with their three-in-a-bed fantasies. She said it was all nonsense, and continued about her business unperturbed. Perhaps the truly remarkable thing was that Swinton, who has spent three decades dedicated to the type of independent film that was made for tuppence by Derek Jarman and watched by half a dozen art students from St Martins, had won an Oscar in the first place. Not only that, but she had done so at an age when many actresses are complaining about the dearth of decent roles for women.

Thirteen years ago, Swinton, now 48, featured in an installation at the Serpentine gallery called The Maybe. It was classic Swinton. She lay in a glass case and slept, or tried to sleep, for a week. Visitors stared at her, just as they do at paintings. Only this was a moving, breathing painting. Occasionally, she changed position, her eyelids flickered, she stretched. Performance art, celebrity spotting and voyeurism all for the price of one. Swinton was perfect for the "role". So much of her work has been about stillness and projection, and her face is ever changing - one second she's a conventional beauty, the next an alien beauty, and the next an alien. Today, her hair is short and yellow-blond, and she is a dead ringer for David Bowie in his late 70s Low period.

For decades, Swinton insisted she was not a proper actor, even though she couldn't define quite what she was. She had a point. In films such as Caravaggio and Edward II, she always has a presence, sometimes an abominable presence (in Edward II she bites out the throat of her brother-in-law), but still we were unsure of her motivations. The Maybe encapsulated her artistic philosophy - anything can be anything, nothing is fixed or known, interpretation is all.

She remembers the first time this struck her as a mini epiphany. She was on a train, 10 years old, going back to boarding school, miserable as hell. "I was sitting in one of those old carriages with the corridor going up the side, and I was aware that nobody on the train would be able to tell how miserable I was. It was this amazing revelation, that you could never really tell what was going on in other people's heads. And I looked around and thought, 'Wow, I wonder what's going on in his life, I wonder what's going on in her life. She's just sitting knitting and he's just sitting reading the paper, but he may have just killed somebody.' Thinking about it was a real cinematic fantasy; it was a revelation to me that what you showed the world was not necessarily what you felt, and vice versa. And you could never be sure you were getting the truth from somebody."

Rosy, a young springer spaniel, is sat in her arms, and Swinton is talking to her like a baby. Her house is huge, and has a lovely, shambolic feel to it - Byrne's paintings, games, dictionaries, food scattered all over the place.

Swinton has a cut-glass, English accent, but her mother is Australian and her father Scottish with a ridiculously long, recorded lineage - Major-General Sir John Swinton is the former head of the Queen's household division and lord lieutenant of Berwickshire. Most of her childhood was spent at boarding schools in England. Her mother used to say that on their 25th wedding anniversary she was celebrating her 21st house move. Swinton didn't think it was much cause for celebration.

She was a clever girl, and her brains made her miserable. At school, she was a year younger than her peers. "My parents wanted me to go there early, partly because they were moving to Germany. I didn't like being clever - I was bullied for it." She went to West Heath girls' school, where Princess Diana was a classmate and friend, and then Fettes, whose most famous pupil is Tony Blair. She hated both. "Being sent to West Heath early wouldn't have been a problem except for the fact that there was a regime there, and if you spoke to anybody who was a year older or in the division above you, you were called bumptious, which meant nobody would talk to you... I was labelled clever because I was in a division with people older than me." Swinton understands now why her parents put her into boarding school, but that doesn't mean she is glad for it.

Swinton went on to Cambridge university with the intention of becoming a poet. Early on, she changed from her course in social and political sciences to English, and never wrote another poem. The day she stopped writing, she started performing. She's still not quite sure what happened, but she knows the environment stymied her. "It's got something to do with a very early snow blindness about how I was asked to read and how I was asked to write, and it totally froze me up. I felt bamboozled by the amount of regurgitating one was asked to do." At Cambridge, she joined the Communist party, but her timing wasn't all it could have been - the CP quickly folded and was reborn as the Democratic Left. What turned her into a commie? "I tell you exactly what turned me into a commie: the great Margot Heinemann and her like when I was at Cambridge. I had the great, great fortune of being taught by her and Raymond Williams and that generation of leftwing intellectuals." For Swinton, party meetings became her high mass. "I'm really grateful for it, because what they made me aware of was the possibility of a combined effort. That was very appealing to me when I was 19, and it's still appealing to me now."

Just today, she has received a Williams biography in the post. It reminded her of the time she was the only student who turned up for one of the literary critic's lectures. He lectured her from the podium. Was she self-conscious? "No, I wasn't. I was embarrassed nobody else was there. It was very depressing."

Although she was close to her parents, politically she could not have been more remote. The first time she found herself in agreement with her father was over Margaret Thatcher. "It was a lovely moment. Thatcher brought my father and I together politically. When she started talking about there being no such thing as society, it outraged people like my father completely, and alienated them because they were old-style, to an extent patriarchal and feudal, but absolutely aware of their responsibilities. For them she was a complete anathema, and for her to call herself a Conservative was an outrage."

She stops, and looks at Rosy, who is now sitting in my arms. "You're totally getting off on this dog. Smell her front paws," she orders. "They smell of toast. I want to bottle her smells. Rosy, Rosy, come here, let's smell your feet... Isn't that amazing?" In the garden live a hedgehog called Slowly and a hare called Gently. "The animals are named how they are," she explains.

There's soup cooking on the Aga, and she's baked cakes - she approves of cake-baking. In August, she launched her own film festival in Nairn in an old ballroom, which she transformed into the Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams. The festival lasted only a few days, didn't show many movies and was held in a remote Scottish town, nevertheless, it received national press interest. Not least because Swinton presided over it in pyjamas, and entry was free for those who baked a communal cake.

She asks if I fancy some of her broth, and then calls upstairs to Byrne. "John Byrne? Darling, d'you want some lunch?" Her voice is as clipped and precise as a slap across the face.

Byrne is 20 years older than her, with great big white mutton chop whiskers. He's complaining about the fact that his two classic TV dramas, Tutti Frutti and Your Cheatin' Heart, are not available on DVD. Your Cheatin' Heart, made in 1990 before they got together, was the first time many people became aware of Swinton. She played Cissie Crouch, a Scottish country and western singer, in what remains one of her most commercial projects.

Among Swinton's art-house fans, she is probably still most readily associated with Jarman. She first worked with him in 1986 on Caravaggio, went on to star in seven of his films and became his muse. They had much in common - both children of military high achievers, both posh rebels, both outsiders. Jarman loved Swinton, was entranced by her androgyny, and dressed her in macho suits for Edward II. Perhaps she was a close approximate to his ideal man.

In 1992, she played two women-men: as the hero of the film Orlando, an adaptation of the Virginia Woolf novel, she straddles the centuries and the sexes (she starts out as a man in the reign of Elizabeth I and becomes a woman in the 18th century), and in Manfred Karge's Man To Man she plays an old woman recalling 50 years of life disguised as a man in Germany. Back then, she refused to give pat answers about her own sexuality, preferring to say she was simply sexual.

It's in her earlier work in particular that she insisted she wasn't acting. She lacked the discipline to be a proper actor, she claimed; she was more like an athlete, which she had been in her school days - every performance different. In recent years, she has turned her hand to more conventional parts alongside more conventional male leads - George Clooney in Michael Clayton and Burn After Reading, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach, Tom Cruise in Vanilla Sky and Bill Murray in Broken Flowers. In Young Adam, she was astounding as the curdled wife of a barge-owner desperate for the love of a younger man. In Michael Clayton, for which she won that Oscar, she used her intimidating bone structure and thin lips to portray, with wonderful economy, a lawyer who was both ruthless, corporate bitch and quivering wreck.

In the recent Coen brothers' film, Burn After Reading, she plays another cold professional. But this time it's callousness by numbers - a cartoon portrait of heartlessness in a heartless film. Yet even at her most one-dimensional, Swinton is immensely watchable. She has two other films due out in the next few weeks, and both show she has not lost her appetite for the arty. In Béla Tar's gorgeous, self-indulgent film noir, The Man From London, she plays another woman on (or over) the edge - she is dubbed into Hungarian, and the little that she does say, she shrieks. The film is made for a face like Swinton's - at one point, the camera pans on her for such a long time that it is only when she blinks that we realise we're not looking at a photograph.

Meanwhile, in Julia, she gives the biggest performance of her life. Even Swinton admits she really is acting in this film. The movie, made by dissolute French auteur Erick Zonca, is inspired by the John Cassavetes film Gloria and is about another woman on the edge. A former glamour girl, Julia is an alcoholic skating towards ruin. She falls out of beds and bars and cars as she heads for the gutter. Life is a potage of scams, lies, disappointments and one-night stands. Swinton gives Julia a horribly authentic signature gesture. After yet another meaningless encounter, she rolls her tongue round her mouth with half-recognised disgust - we can almost smell the previous night on her breath.

For all its nihilism, she sees Julia as a positive film. What she loves about the character is her energy, her belief that no matter how far gone she is, things can get better. What depresses her about Burn After Reading is the very opposite - everybody is fixed in their stupid, monstrous ways. "I don't know where there's any utopia in it, I don't know what it shows us about anything to hope for, which doesn't mean it's meaningless, but it is a tough thing to swallow." Does she resist that sense of hopelessness? "Yes, I do. Because I think there is something in general that I am into, which is the possibility of transformation."

I ask if her performance in Julia is a homage to Gena Rowlands, who played Gloria in the Cassavetes film. No, she says, that's not quite right... "I think Julia's seen Gloria." She suggests that the character Gloria is somebody Julia has observed, admired and subconsciously copied. It's an important distinction for Swinton. She has always believed in the inner life of her characters - they exist in the real world, watch movies, are influenced by what and whom they see. She has another interesting theory - that all the characters she plays are, to a degree, autobiographical, which is the opposite of what many actors like to tell you. There has to be something in her that she can call on to play Julia, even if there is nothing of Julia in her.

Why do directors want her to play such hard, broken women? "Well, I have a hand in it, in that I'm drawn to the opportunities to show it. It moves me, I think. I suppose it's an indulgence to play people who are less settled than you are yourself."

It's true - unlike her characters, she doesn't seem at all crushed. She thinks about it: "I'd agree with you - I am pretty uncrushed."

As we eat lunch, Swinton and Byrne reminisce about Oscar night. Byrne was in Scotland, Swinton in LA with Kopp, and in a state of shock. "I went as a tourist. Imagine you got tickets to the final of Wimbledon, and you're sitting there, and somebody hands you a racket... I mean... What!" For once, she is at a loss for words.

I tell her she made a good, funny speech. She says she hasn't got a clue what she said. "No, and I'll thank you, sir, for not reminding me, because I have gone out of my way... I have still not seen one image from the Oscar night. YouTube, I adore it, but I'm not going there."

I ask Byrne if he saw the speech. "No, I was asleep. Tilda phoned me at five past four in the morning."

Swinton: "You didn't even know where I was. 'Won what? Won the bingo? Won at poker?' I kind of rang you because I thought, 'Isn't that what people do?'"

Byrne: "I knew exactly where you were. It was the middle of the night, pitch black."

Swinton: "No, you said, 'Who's this?' I'm so glad we've got the 36 volumes of the Oxford English dictionary next door still wrapped in their cellophane waiting for many, many evenings of the dictionary game... Listen, I'm going to call this meeting to order because I have to go and get the monkeys.' "

Byrne returns to his work, Swinton, Rosy and I go to collect the children. Who does most of the childcare, her or Byrne? "John Byrne is not always here, and is not really in the hot seat... he's a bit of a floating voter when it comes to feeding anybody." Why does she always call him John Byrne? She laughs, surprised - she doesn't seem to have thought about it before. "Why do I call him John Byrne? I think there's something quite funny about calling him John Byrne."

We're in her ancient, smelly Land Rover, heading for the Steiner school her twins attend. Rosy is sitting on Swinton's knee as she drives. I mention the article that suggested she was the luckiest woman in the world. "Really? Where was it... Smash Hits?"

You are lucky, though, aren't you?

"Very. Really, really lucky."

How does her relationship work with Byrne? "It's really, really straightforward. These are the things that happen often and these are the things that rarely happen," she says in best teacher mode. "Very, very often, people have children with people they are no longer sweethearts with... and then they have a relationship with someone new, right? What rarely happens is that they are still completely good friends and continue to live in the same house. But that's all it is. The thing with us is that this has been the case for four years, and nobody noticed until the beginning of this year... The truth is, I've been going to all sorts of events with my sweetheart, and travelling everywhere with him, and everybody has been aware of it..." She pauses. "I think it comes down to being on British telly at the Baftas. Before that, you're just an art freak, so nobody cares."

Did she and Byrne consider splitting up? "Never. Never. Why would we? We have a really lovely life bringing up the children together. John has always talked about living on his own, ever since I've known him. Probably all his life. He always wanted to live by himself in a bothy."

And does he? "Yes, he's got a cottage 20 minutes down the beach. It's an honourable tradition, living by yourself, to be alone, especially if you're an artist who needs to paint through the night. And I've lived alongside John Byrne for 20 years, and he's one of those people. He loves to be alone."

Kopp, another painter, is 18 years younger than Swinton. They met when she was filming The Chronicles Of Narnia in New Zealand and he was working on the film as an illustrator. Meanwhile, Byrne has also found himself a girlfriend. "He has got a lady friend. A friendly lady! A sweetheart!" Swinton exclaims with delight.

She explains exactly how the domestics work - sometimes Kopp stays with them, sometimes Byrne's lady friend stays with them when he's not down the bothy, sometimes they all stay in the house - two couples, two parents to the twins and four friends. How do they explain the relationships to the children?

"God, you see, this has been the case for the children for at least half their lives, so it's not something you have to... what they have is two parents who are really happy, and who are very much in harness. It sounds ridiculous to have to state it, but we really get a kick out of being their parents. We really enjoy it, and we enjoy doing it together, and we enjoy doing it individually."

It sounds quite different from the threesome I've read about, I say, somewhat disappointed. "I think it's a foursome now," she laughs. So there's not one big bed for all the adults? "Well, the truth is, I tend to share my bed with two children and a dog here - and it is rather crowded and very, very cuddly."

Byrne loves the way things have worked out, she says, because it gets him off the hook from some of the fatherly duties he finds less enjoyable. "Everybody is very close friends. You know, it's just very familial. The Dude is not here at the moment, because he is in New York, but he will be here next week." The Dude is Kopp? "Yes, he is sometimes known as the Dude. John's absolutely thrilled that he doesn't have to take people snorkelling, and John didn't want to travel the world with me. John and I haven't been sweethearts for a while..."

And he's never been jealous? Silence. "You'd have to ask him... but it's been such an organic evolution that I think he's just been so happy." I ask if theirs was always an open relationship. She bristles. "No, it wasn't an open relationship - 'open relationship' I do take issue with, because it sounds like, you know, anything goes, and it's slightly insulting to the relationships that are there. No, you are talking about a relationship that has evolved. Our situation is very much more ordinary than the papers would like to think. We're really very dull."

We call for the children at school. Xavier and Honor, her 11-year-old twins, are friendly, warm and as androgynous as you'd expect any children of Swinton's to be - both have blond, Rapunzel-like hair rippling down their back. We march down the high street, Swinton at the head, alongside Rosy. Swinton has transformed herself again - bustling purposefully, she reminds me of Helen Mirren playing the Queen in the movie. We pop into the chippy, which is fresh out of fish, and settle for sausage and chips.

Back in the car, Swinton beeps the horn as John Byrne passes driving the opposite way. The kids ask when Sandro is next coming to stay.

Swinton says it's funny that she plays all these emotionally disturbed or battered women, because she's never been so content. She loves Scotland, loves the fact that the kids are growing up around her, loves the freedoms in her life. And, of course, there is the success. What a shame Derek Jarman wasn't around to see her win the Oscar. "Well, I think he was," she says. "Somehow. I think he probably arranged it to have a good laugh. It was very funny indeed. What can I say? It was like a big mistake, really."

It is incredible that Swinton, who for decades was too indie for most indie film-makers, has now been embraced by mainstream Hollywood. What on earth happened? Swinton, as usual, has a theory: "You know what? It is the mountain coming to Muhammad. It's a sign of the times; that the studios are employing people to make their Hollywood pictures who might have seen Orlando or The Last Of England, and they say, 'I'll have her, please.' Look around - last year, the American films that were making any kind of waves critically/commercially were made by people like the Coens, Paul Thomas Anderson and Tony Gilroy." She says that the people commissioning the movies at the moment tend to be in their 40s and are unusually cine-literate. "I heard this morning that the Coen brothers' film is number one at the box office and has broken all sorts of independent records - and it's a film in which everyone is in at least their mid- if not late 40s and 50s."

It's so strange the way things work out, she says. Swinton is heading for 50, and having it all without having compromised one iota. Crazy, she says. Unimaginable. "What's gone wrong?" She grins. "It's all gone badly wrong." ·

Julia is released in cinemas and on Sky Box Office on December 5.

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