Intersex Immortal Tilda Swinton

Fri, 09/11/2009 - 8:40pm by pkooger

Oscar-winning actress Tilda Swinton is one of those people who make me want to see a movie just because she’s in it. The last film I saw her in was Orlando, a beautiful film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel about an English nobleman who stays eternally young, but does not stay eternally male. After about 200 years of life, Orlando becomes a woman and gains a new perspective on life. The film continues for another 200 years of life and ends showing Orlando as a mother in present-day England, a time and place added to the original story which Woolf did not live to see.

Tilda Swinton has a knack for being cast as characters who are androgynous, ageless, or both. In Constantine, a dark fantasy/action film based on the graphic novel series, she plays for both sides of the heaven/hell divide as the angel Gabriel, a genderless immortal. In the 2006 film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, she rules with an icy fist as the ageless villain Jadis, the White Witch.

Swinton has also appeared in such popular films as Burn After Reading, Michael Clayton, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.