Tilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton (New Hall/ Murray Edwards, 1980) is a queer actress. In addition to her Oscar and Bafta awards, Tilda has won 3 Teddy Awards, presented at the Berlin International Film Festival for films with LGBT+ content.

​​

In her early career, she made several films with Derek Jarman, who died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994. Russell T Davies’s It’s a Sin, about a group of young men cut down by the AIDS epidemic, includes a female character Jill, who lives with the boys, visits them in hospital, holds their hands as they are dying.

​

“I was that girl,”  Tilda has said.

 

“That was very much my experience. That was the atmosphere of my late 20s and early 30s. What was so tragic was the breakdown of the blood family support. Lots of people couldn’t go home so they stayed with us and we looked after everyone as best we could.”