Tilda Swinton Quotes & Sayings

What very often happens when people make films about rich people, the camera is quite mesmerised by the opulence and quite theatrical in fact. — Tilda Swinton

It's a real comfort zone for me to feel alien. — Tilda Swinton

I would say, and this sounds like a rather immodest thing to say, but the truth is it's probably the most amazing thing of all, it's pretty much exactly what I thought we were going to make, what I hoped we'd make. — Tilda Swinton

The people I'm working with tend to be people I know, who are my friends, and I like hanging out with them. There's nothing better than making a long-term project with your friends. It's just dreamy. — Tilda Swinton

Most of us live our whole lives without having an adventure to call our own. What is any life without the pursuit of a dream? — Tilda Swinton

I remember noticing, when I had my babies, how much I liked them, and not just loved them, but I was really into them. I knew I was going to be curious about them, and up for the mayhem ahead. — Tilda Swinton

What he's done is recognise the cinematic nature of the book. It's beautifully realised - it's a beat film. — Tilda Swinton

It was an amazing performer. Very temperamental, it spent a lot of time in its trailer. — Tilda Swinton

It was just me, naked as underneath my clothes right now, as all of you are. — Tilda Swinton

Nic's Charlie is something very particular. You can't really put them together. It's a phantasm. — Tilda Swinton

I wasn't around when Nic was playing Donald. I was around with Charlie. — Tilda Swinton

I think that a real film fan experience is about a kind of omnivorous experience. — Tilda Swinton

I think there's a dishonorable tradition in Hollywood to give the idea, particularly to children, that evil characters are dark. — Tilda Swinton

I think of great masters, like [Alfred] Hitchcock, for example, who works absolutely within this sensational realm. You feel like you can always tell what temperature a room is in a Hitchcock film because the people feel alive, they don't feel like they're just being filmed on a stage. — Tilda Swinton

If we don't accept loneliness, then capitalism wins hands down. Because capitalism is all about trying to convince people that you can distract yourself, that you can make it better. And it ain't true. — Tilda Swinton

What children, in fact all of us at any age, find frightening is unreliability and emotional coldness. The idea that you can't affect someone, that you can't see where they're coming from and can change tact at any moment. — Tilda Swinton

This self-obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent on surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing. — Tilda Swinton

I would say that I think the film [I am love] is absolutely about nature, it recommends human nature. You don't need to recommend change, that's inevitable, it's the only reliable thing we have. — Tilda Swinton

I was always, and I still am to a certain extent, one of those lazy people who spends a lot of time with Italian friends and yet constantly says I don't speak Italian. Things slow down when I start speaking Italian. — Tilda Swinton

The work is different in the sense that I haven't had to travel round the world raising money, or work from the genesis of the project. But the collaboration feels clear always, it's sort of my drug, I'm in it for the conversation. The conversation's the most important part of it. — Tilda Swinton

I always think of the word 'abandonment' when I think of the character. — Tilda Swinton

When I say that it's taken us [with Luca Guadagnino ] 11 years to make this film, what I mean is that it was 11 years ago that we started to talk about a kind of cinema that we wanted to make together. — Tilda Swinton

I follow my nose. It's as simple as that. — Tilda Swinton

I'm from the same planet as David Bowie. — Tilda Swinton

I've only ever gone into studio films with people I really like. — Tilda Swinton

I was not, and am not, officially a producer of that film [I am love] but the work of what a producer does I learned at that stage and to a certain extent I've been a producer ever since. — Tilda Swinton

How do we identify ourselves, and how do we settle into other people's expectations for our identity? — Tilda Swinton

I believe that all great art holds the power to dissolve things: time, distance, difference, injustice, alienation, despair. I believe that all great art holds the power to mend things: join, comfort, inspire hope in fellowship, reconcile us to our selves. Art is good for my soul precisely because it reminds me that we have souls in the first place. — Tilda Swinton

Years ago, when James Bulger was murdered, every newspaper front page was talking about evil. At that point, having suppressed it for years, I remembered when I was four or five, I tried to kill my own brother. — Tilda Swinton

I live a soldier's life when I'm working. That's how it feels to me, except I've got a slightly greater chance of survival. — Tilda Swinton

I've been on the other side of the table many times, trying to get people to be sympathetic to projects, and I've been the victim of that kind of intense kindness masking extreme stupidity. — Tilda Swinton

It may be unfair of me but I do feel I know it. — Tilda Swinton

Maybe it was my revenge on people who had been unkind to me as a child. But it was very easy and a thrill to freeze up children. — Tilda Swinton

I would rather be handsome for an hour than pretty for a week. — Tilda Swinton

I think that's true of all cinema, that's why cinema is the great humanistic art form. Whatever the film is, it doesn't matter what the film is about, or even whether it's a narrative or figurative film at all, it's an invitation to step into somebody else's shoes. Even if it's the filmmaker's shoes filming a landscape, you go into somebody else's shoes and you look out of their lens, you look out of their eyes and their imagination. That's what going to the pictures is all about. — Tilda Swinton

To be honest the work that a producer does is work that I've done for most of my working life. It's work that I started to do, for example, when I worked with Sally Potter on Orlando. We developed it together over five years. — Tilda Swinton

I knew Spike Jonze would do something really interesting with it. — Tilda Swinton

There's a thing I really mind hearing, when someone says: "That's not my kind of film, I don't want to go and see that ... " I don't believe that, I don't believe that it's possible to write off a whole genre of filmmaking - "oh I don't like subtitled films", or "I don't like black and white films", or I don't like films made before or after, a certain date" - I don't believe that. — Tilda Swinton

It's exotic for me to be given a script that's already written, and be given a pay cheque, and asked to dress up and play, and that's all. — Tilda Swinton

I think that both Luca [ Guadagnino]and I have a kind of resistance to the idea of a film holding a moral message because that would exclude so many people from feeling that it was their film and it's important for a piece of work to feel owned by every member of the audience. — Tilda Swinton

About actors' lives ... I'm not the person to ask. I don't live an actor's life and I really don't know. I probably read less about actors' lives than you all do. So, I'm in the dark about all of that, sorry. — Tilda Swinton