With her noble Scottish and Australian lineage, 5-foot-11 frame, red hair, emerald eyes, and otherworldly look, the enigmatic
Tilda Swinton is not your run-of-the-mill actor.
Most recently, she wrapped the Joel and Ethan Coen comedy "Burn After Reading," in which she reunites with her "Michael Clayton" sparring partner George Clooney, here playing his lover.
"Well, yes, but we're even more horrible to each other this time," Swinton notes. "In fact, it was quite sweet; on the
last day of shooting he said, 'When are we going to make a film together when we're nice to each other?' " Swinton continues,
"I'm very happy to shout at him on screen. It's great fun. ["Burn After Reading" is] a kind of monster caper movie. All of
us are monsters -- like, true monsters. It's ridiculous. It's much lighter than 'No Country for Old Men.'"
Back Stage: How does it feel to have been nominated for (an Oscar,) a Golden Globe and a SAG Award for "Michael Clayton"?
Swinton: Any nomination is good for the future. Financiers are very superstitious, and they have a fantasy of a Midas touch.
It might make making independent films easier, to have these tiny bits of material stuck to your lapel. It's a good thing.
I'm not complaining. It feels to me, as an observer, that when performers are nominated for things that it's really writers
that are being honored, because parts are written and, especially with a film like "Michael Clayton," [writer-director] Tony
Gilroy gave us such opportunities to play that. In a strange way, I suppose I was relieved that we did his material proud
because the bar was set so high by the script that it would've been a shame, really, if we hadn't. Tony Gilroy is all over
this film. It's like a machine he's built.
Back Stage: Since we last spoke to you, "The Chronicles of Narnia" happened and you are an action figure now, which is
a pinnacle for any performer.
Swinton: I am an action figure! There's no Ella from "Young Adam" action figure. I don't know whether there's giong to
be a Karen Crowder from "Michael Clayton" action figure, but we live in hope.
Back Stage: You've reached a great new point in your career balancing art and commerce with the big players and exciting
directors. How do you feel about your career's trajectory?
Swinton: It still doesn't feel like a career. It feels like a life, and I'm in this very, very lucky zone at the moment
where for some reason -- and I'm not going to second-guess it, because I'm lucking out -- really nice people who I don't know
are coming to me and asking me to work with them. Who thought a couple of years ago that I would make two films with Clooney
back to back, and that David Fincher would ask me to be in his great epic ["Benjamin Button"] with Brad Pitt? You know, they're
such cool people, and the studios are putting their big projects in the hands of such cool people.
Back Stage: Did you do any special preparation to play Karen Crowder aside from meeting with real high-powered female attorneys?
Swinton: I felt her relationship with her body and her physicality was very important. Everything she does is uncomfortable.
Every piece of clothing she has doesn't fit. It's either too tight or too loose. Those people have a uniform, and you can
virtually get fired for wearing the wrong color shoes. It's military. I think of her as a poor actress badly cast. She's really
out of sync with everything. She's in the wrong hair color. She's in the wrong makeup scheme. None of it fits. I had this
first image that came directly from the script. It's a scene where she's on a treadmill just before she's preparing to bring
in this deal for U/North, and I just had this fantasy of her with a potbelly. You put a lean woman on a treadmill with a set
of legal notes, and she's a success. She's someone who's running to maintain a level of fitness. Karen is constantly striving
for something that doesn't exist in her own life. That moved me. I had quite a few pies over the course of the few months
before we shot.
Back Stage: I love that you compare her to a poor actress badly cast. The scene in which she's rehearsing for the corporate
training video really reveals that.
Swinton: Imagine having to rehearse your own job in your own life. She hasn't even got it down. She's so in the wrong place.
I had this whole fantasy about what Karen should be doing. She should probably be running a pet-accessories store. What would
make her happy? A lot of therapy, I think.
Back Stage: What was the biggest challenge of playing Karen?
Swinton: I suppose the hardest thing for me was believing that anybody talked like that and really understood it. I always
find it very difficult to learn my lines until I'm on, like, take 13, certainly until I'm moving around the space. But that
jargon -- I find it so hard to believe that anybody understands it, but they do. I was in a platform in the underground in
New York City not that long ago, and I was standing beside a couple who were coming back from work, and they were straight
out of "Michael Clayton" and they were talking this stuff, and they both looked as if they understood it. It's, like, beyond
Chinese [to me].
Back Stage: What is your process when you take on a character? I read that you said it's all autobiography and actors are
always playing themselves because "the last thing you want is to look like you're acting."
Swinton: I can't make claims for other performers, but I feel that's true for myself. You only have yourself to work with,
and that includes, of course, your imitative powers and your imagination and your sense of fantasy and maybe your sense of
denial. I'll find my own interest in it, and then I'll root it in something that's really personal to me, whether it's something
that's actually within me or something that I know a lot about.
The performance in "Michael Clayton" is not autobiographical in the sense that I know nothing of lawyers, I'm not an American,
and I don't live in Milwaukee. But I am a soldier's daughter, and I spent my life wondering how human beings do inhuman things
and how they look at themselves in the mirror in the morning. And that's the microdot for me to feel rooted in that performance.
It just keeps my own curiosity alive. I've found that if you plot your energy in that kind of question mark rather than in
any plan of what you're going to do, the performance has a chance of ending up feeling more fluid and less brittle and less
schematic and just more human somehow.
(full interview at Backstage)
