Contemporary Icon Tilda Swinton Honored at Venice International Film Festival

NEWS | September 14, 2020

Actress and muse Tilda Swinton was celebrated at this year's 77th Venice International Film Festival for extraordinary achievement throughout her career, 19 years after receiving her first prize.

"One-of-a-kind" has to be the most well-suited term to describe the incredible Tilda Swinton. Actress, muse, performer, and producer, at 59 she has built a rich and diverse career. Known for always thinking outside the box, she navigated from the independent cinema scene to Hollywood blockbusters like the Narnia trilogy, revealing her to wider audiences in 2005. A beacon of the silver screen and an inspiration to directors like Jim Jarmusch and Luca Guadagnino, she will be awarded a Golden Lion for a lifetime achievement in cinema at the upcoming Venice International Film Festival, from September 2^nd to 12^th.

Oscar-decorated for her second role in Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton (2017), the actress has performed in over fifty feature-length films and in an eclectic range of styles and genres — from the Marvel franchises to Lynne Ramsay's 2011 psycho-drama We Need to Talk About Kevin, via the Coen brothers' dark comedies Burn After Reading (2008) and Hail, Caesar! (2016). After 34 years in the industry, Tilda Swinton has hardly aged a day, and her magnetic vibe has transfixed more than one great filmmaker: Tim Roth (The War Zone, 1999), Danny Boyle (The Beach, 2000), Spike Jonze (Adaptation, 2003), David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, 2008), Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin, 2011), or even her regular collaborations with Wes Anderson (2012's Moonrise Kingdom, 2013's Grand Budapest Hotel, and 2020's upcoming The French Dispatch).

The actress has made a strong impression on cinematic history, especially in the works of Jim Jarmusch and Luca Guadagnino. She fascinated audiences in the Italian director's I Am Love (2009), A Bigger Splash (2015), and Suspiria (2018). In Jarmusch's 2005 dramedy Broken Flowers, which incidentally took home the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, she alternates between melancholic and divine creature — before turning into a vampire in 2013's Only Lovers Left Alive, and an eccentric undertaker in 2019's The Dead Don't Die. Altogether, her breathtaking body of work provides us endless reminders of how Swinton has cultivated her brilliance through constant reinvention.