Tilda Swinton names the movie that follows her everywhere she goes: “It’s always one film”
Tilda Swinton has spent much of the last four decades being one of the most singular screen stars in history. The British actor tends to play enigmatic, icy, slightly unknowable characters, and thanks to her unique look, has also played plenty of androgynous roles. In fact, she was pushing at the boundaries of on-screen gender from as far back as 1992’s Orlando, in which she played a nobleman in the Elizabethan era who wakes up one day to find out he has become a woman.
Over the years, Swinton has lent her talents to a brilliant mix of mainstream and independent fare, meaning she’s as comfortable appearing as the White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia franchise as she is in Jim Jarmusch’s Broken Flowers or Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. According to the star herself, though, there is one film that follows her all over the world, which some may find surprising considering it was critically derided at the time of release.
“There’s one thing that I absolutely love, which is going through airports all around the planet, going through the X-ray machines,” Swinton smiled to Elle magazine. “It’s always one film: Constantine. I don’t know if the security detail on the global airport syndicates play Constantine for people around the clock, but that is the film that they always talk about. Maybe it’s because I wear wings in that one.”
So, instead of eager airport security guys asking Swinton about her Oscar-winning role in Michael Clayton, her many collaborations with Wes Anderson, or even her stint in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as The Ancient One, they seemingly only want to talk about Francis Lawrence’s 2005 thriller, which starred Keanu Reeves as the surly, cancer-afflicted supernatural investigator John Constantine. In that movie, Swinton played the Archangel Gabriel, a mysterious being of unknowable motives, who may or may not be behind a devious plot to release Lucifer’s son from Hell to wreak havoc on Earth.
In the Bible, Gabriel is described as “in the shape of a man,” but Lawrence felt hiring Swinton for the role was the perfect opportunity to let her have some fun with gender again. In 2005, she told Phase9 Entertainment, “It doesn’t say he is a man; just says ‘looks like’ one. And I quite often get given a male frisk when I go through the X-ray at airports, so I was up for that.” What is it about this role and airport security?!
Anyway, upon release, Constantine made a healthy amount at the box office ($230.9million, to be exact), but reviews weren’t kind. There was also a minor fan backlash when DC/Vertigo Comics die-hards complained about the blonde-haired Liverpudlian protagonist from the Hellblazer series being reimagined as a black-haired denizen of Los Angeles. To this, a playful Swinton countered, “There’s a really honourable tradition in the comic book world where different illustrators can illustrate the same story, so who knows, maybe another Constantine will look different.”
Over time, though, Constantine’s reputation has improved significantly, and it has developed a truly dedicated fan following that claims, “Hey, this was good, actually.” This likely explains why so many people know Swinton from that film specifically; it keeps generating a new audience instead of falling into obscurity like so many other movies of its kind.
Of course, it also helps that Reeves has spent the two decades since the movie’s release waxing lyrical about how Constantine is the one character he is desperate to reprise. In 2021, he told Stephen Colbert, “I would love to be John Constantine again. I’ve tried,” and in 2025, admitted to the Happy Sad Confused podcast, “I’m aching to play this guy.”
In 2022, it was officially announced that Warner Bros was developing a sequel, but it took until early 2025 for Reeves and Lawrence to get the go-ahead on a story everyone was happy with. As for Swinton’s involvement, which would surely cause spontaneous rejoicing among airport security employees worldwide, she was predictably coy. “I’m sorry to have to tell you that I know nothing about this sequel except that I’ve heard it’s happening,” she claimed to Inverse. “Unless they’re very late in calling me, I don’t think Gabriel will be flapping his/her wings.” As with anything in Hollywood, though, maybe this could be a case of “Never say never.”
