The dream role Tilda Swinton wants Wes Anderson to write for her: “Possibly, in fact, a ghost”
Tilda Swinton has long played strange and unusual women – and even men – across decades of successful films, working with everyone from Derek Jarman and Jim Jarmusch to David Fincher and Cameron Crowe. She has portrayed vampires, witches, stressed-out mothers, a gender-bending courtier, and even a bald monk, never turning down a role in fear of it being too odd.
Swinton loves anything off-kilter, and even though Swinton has appeared in her fair share of super mainstream films, like Doctor Strange, she’ll always be known for being eccentric, which is perhaps why she has found herself attracted to Wes Anderson’s world, and the filmmaker isn’t exactly some secret, of course, but he certainly pushes an idiosyncratic aesthetic that merges arthouse tendencies with more mainstream appeal, which sits at a perfect intersection for Swinton to get involved in.
The actor has appeared in five of his movies so far, beginning with the charming coming-of-age tale Moonrise Kingdom, while her most recent Anderson performance came in the form of a scientist in Asteroid City, with Swinton’s love of all things a little weird making her the perfect candidate for an Anderson film – and she’s not done with him yet.
When Swinton likes working with a director, she’ll stick with them for as many collaborations as possible, as demonstrated by her other longstanding partnerships with Jarman, Joanna Hogg, and Luca Guadagnino, making her ready to work with Anderson for the indefinite future, even conjuring up her dream role that she’d love for him to direct.
Talking to The Guardian, Swinton detailed her ideal Anderson-directed role: “I imagine a detective or maybe, rather, the provincial lady of a decrepit manor with a deep love of detective fiction who is irresistibly drawn into solving some gruesome, convoluted intrigue. Almost certainly mute… possibly, in fact, a ghost… Yes. A ghost, trying to get her solved clues across the divide.”
Anderson has never gone supernatural before, but if he’s going to hire anyone to play a ghost in one of his films, Swinton seems like the only right choice. “I imagine the final clue that nails the solution to the murder being the canine nose smear on the bottom panel of a French window – the only possible culprit being a particularly short-legged terrier… Write it, Wes – you know you want to,” she added.
The pair actually go way back, with the filmmaker telling Variety, “Tilda was at Sundance for Orlando when we showed our short film of Bottle Rocket there in 1993. I had never seen – as an audience member and also, from a snowy distance, in person – anyone remotely like her. And like everyone else in Park City, I was immediately captivated.”
So, it might have taken them a while to finally work together, but when they did, it proved to be a cinematic match made in heaven, and with other collaborations, including Isle of Dogs, between them, it seems like she’s going to be called up for damn-near whatever Anderson works on next.
Now, though, he’s got to get thinking about a supernatural-themed movie if he wants to make Swinton’s dream come true.
