Tilda Swinton picks her favourite movies of all time
British actor Tilda Swinton is one of the most iconic faces of contemporary cinema, known for her androgynous look that has allowed her to morph into a wide variety of male and female characters. Swinton spent a large chunk of the late 1980s and early ’90s starring in the works of experimental filmmaker Derek Jarman, such as Caravaggio and Wittgenstein.
However, she also garnered attention after playing the gender-fluid protagonist of Sally Potter’s Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf’s extraordinary novel of the same name. By the early 2000s, Swinton became involved in more mainstream movies, such as The Deep End and Vanilla Sky. By balancing commercially successful projects with independent, arthouse endeavours, Swinton has maintained a career based on an intense love for cinema in its varying forms.
Over the years, Swinton, who is quite the cinephile, has discussed her favourite films of all time. One movie that the actor has frequently referred to as an all-time favourite is Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter of Life and Death. In Cindy Pearlman’s You Gotta See This: More Than 100 of Hollywood’s Best Reveal and Discuss Their Favourite Film, Swinton expressed her love for how the film “creates a magical world” and explores “the fantasy of heaven in a man’s mind”.
Talking to the BFI, Swinton highlighted her love for Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Medea, stating: “For Pasolini’s monumental/barbaric/visionary touch, for Cappadocia’s timelessly savage landscape, for Piero Tosi’s jaw-dropping primaeval costumes, for Maria Callas’s profile. A film inspired by Euripides that feels like it was dug up from inside an ancient tomb, shot in 1968. Wild.”
Swinton is also a big fan of Japanese master, Ozu Yasijuro, picking both his 1932 film I Was Born… But and his classic 1953 drama Tokyo Story. Discussing the latter, she said: “Magisterial. The final journey of elderly parents to each of their grown children in turn. The heartbreak of generational disconnection and the inescapable tenderness of familial bonds, the comfort of human ritual and the inevitable turn of the Great Wheel. Profoundly moving.”
A more recent pick comes in the form of Stranger by the Lake from 2013, which she described as “exquisitely atmospheric summer cruising. Boys looking for boys and the idyll of abandon. A breathtakingly swoony study in wicked tension, the romance of danger and real erotic yearning.”
In the Sight and Sound ‘The Greatest Films Of All Time’ poll, Swinton selected My Neighbour Totoro as one of the best films ever. She once revealed to W Magazine: “When I met Hayao Miyazaki last night, I told him with not a word of a lie that he’s a household god in my family. […] If I’m ever in a coma, just play the music of My Neighbour Totoro, and I’ll come round.”
Find a complete list of Swinton’s favourite films below.
Tilda Swinton’s favourite movies:
- A Matter of Life and Death (Powell and Pressburger, 1946)
- Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
- Bag of Rice (Mohammad-Ali Talebi, 1996)
- Bruno (Larry Charles, 2009)
- I Know Where I’m Going! (Emeric Pressburger, Michael Powell, 1946)
- I was Born, but… – (Ozu Yasujiro, 1932)
- Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1975)
- Journey to Italy – (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)
- La Belle et la Bête – (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
- La Dolce Vita (Federico Fellini, 1960)
- Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
- M – (Fritz Lang, 1931)
- Medea – (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970)
- Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday (Jacques Tati, 1953)
- My Childhood / My Ain Folk / My Way Home – (Bill Douglas, 1973, ’74,’ 79)
- My Neighbour Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1988)
- Pickpocket (Robert Bresson, 1959)
- Stranger by the Lake – (Alain Guiraudie, 2013)
- To Be Or Not To Be (Ernst Lubitsch, 1942)
- Tokyo Story – (Ozu Yasujiro, 1953)
- Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives – (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)
- Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958)
- Walkabout (Nicolas Roeg, 1971)
