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tilda swinton, we need to talk about kevin

Tilda Swinton has always taken risks with her career, her appearance and her personal life. They usually pay off, but few have seemed as daring as her latest role in We Need to Talk About Kevin. As Eva, a travel writer who resents being tied down by her supremely awful little boy who, as a teen, does something truly terrible, Swinton demolishes the sacred concept of maternal love.

Busting taboos is nothing new for the 51-year-old British actor; Swinton has been doing that since her early screen work for the late director Derek Jarman, often devoting herself to years of development on high-art projects such as Orlando, I Am Love and this one, the third feature by Lynne Ramsay (Ratcatcher, Morvern Callar). (Watch our interview with Ramsay and actor Ezra Miller HERE.)

Though she remains committed to the cutting edge, Swinton has enjoyed some Hollywood success in recent years, winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Michael Clayton and appearing in such high-profile productions as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Burn After Reading, Vanilla Sky and the Chronicles of Narnia series.

This film plays like a double-edged parental nightmare: You don't really like your kid, and he turns out to be about as bad as he possibly could.

"I call this the feel-good film of the year, because parents will leave the cinema going, 'There but for the grace of God go I.' And people who don't have children will leave the cinema going, 'There but for the grace of God go I!' So it's a win-win situation, I reckon."

You have twins?

"I do indeed."

Did that provide…

"Anything useful? [Laughs.] The only sort of Venn diagram cross with my own experience was that I do remember, very distinctly, when I had my babies, noticing that the instantaneous love that I had hoped would kick in did kick in. But I also remember realizing during those first few moments of encountering them that it was a lucky thing, that it might have gone another way. And I'd never really prepared for that."

Well, something like that just isn't acceptable in polite company — or, often, by moviegoers. How did you go about making audiences, if not sympathetic to Eva, at least care about what she goes through?

"If we had played Eva in the way that she is portrayed in Lionel Shriver's book, it would have been much easier for an audience to reject her very early. We needed to leaven the character a little, not make her softer but just more open. And that's a delicate business.

I think that there are a number of taboo subjects that we've sort of taken forward. We say it's an adaptation, but in a way it's more that it’s inspired by the book. The book is so much more wordy, as books tend to be, but it's particularly wordy because it's written in the form of letters. It's about somebody trying to describe, explain and understand what's going on. But as our budget was cut, we realized we'd have to become more and more interior and the palette was going to have to become more limited in a way — so the more it became the inside of this woman's fantasy, her memory and her mind."

You mentioned budget restrictions. You spent some four years working with Lynne Ramsay before you could get the film funded, right?

"We were making Michael Clayton in 2007 when I met her, and she was working on this. For me, that's speedy; four years is really fast."

You put all that time into projects, and yet you often say that you wish that somebody else would have played your roles in the movies. Why is that?

"I always think that. I just like to meet new animals. That's just me and the cinema. I always felt it was disappointing to be in a second film. But having been in a second film, I think I might as well go on and keep trying to feel like a different animal. I think that's the best I can do now, if I'm going to go on performing."

Does that explain your eclectic body of work?

"The thing that has kept me performing is my interest in transformation. Most of the stories, most of the portraits that I've been involved in contributing to, have had within them a moment of transformation, a moment of challenge. In Orlando, a young man is transformed into a woman. In a film like Michael Clayton, even, someone who is really quite ill-equipped to do a certain task just tips over into making the wrong decision and becoming quite malevolent. These sort of turns of the wheel really interest me."

How do you transform in the upcoming Wes Anderson film, Moonrise Kingdom?

"It's about two young people who are in love and all the people around them losing their minds as a result. I wear a really, really stupid wig."

That's a stretch. Beside that signature tomboy hair, you usually look so expertly turned out, no matter how strange the fashion. What makes you such a great clothes horse? And don't say it's because you like to transform.

"Two things. First of all, it's fun. Secondly, I have the very good fortune of having a lot of close friends who make beautiful clothes. They give them to me or they lend them to me. If they didn't, then I would be here in my corduroy trousers one more time. But, y'know, since I was given a dress last week, I’m wearing it for you!"

Bob Strauss lives in L.A. where he writes about movies and filmmakers.



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