Tilda Swinton

An accomplished actress of art house and mainstream fare known for her androgynous looks, Tilda Swinton was born in London on Nov. 5, 1960.

Due in part to her father's job as head of Queen Elizabeth II's household division, Swinton was educated at the prestigious West Heath Girls School in Kent, where she befriended a young Lady Diana Spencer, the future Princess of Wales. Swinton took up acting at Cambridge University and spent the early part of her career on stage, making her film debut in Caravaggio (1986).

Over the course of a long and varied career, she went on to play a gender-shifting courtier in Orlando (1992); a protective mother in The Deep End (2001), for which she received a Golden Globe nod; the powerful White Witch in The Chronicles of Narnia series; and a conflicted corporate lawyer in Michael Clayton (2007), for which she earned her first Oscar win for Best Supporting Actress.

Filmography