Top 25 Tilda Swinton Quotes

The thing that keeps me being a performer is my interest in society’s obsession with identity, because I’m not sure that I really believe identity exists.

I find myself apologising for not being a proper actor. I never intended to be involved in the film industry and still do feel that, with the exception of a couple of brief skirmishes with the film industry.

I always think of the word ‘abandonment’ when I think of the character.

I was a professional gambler. When I lived in London, there were a couple of years when I didn’t really earn money doing anything else. I mean, I did other things: like, I made work, and I was working with Derek Jarman at the time, but the way I made money was putting money on horses.

This is the launch of the ‘Doctor Strange’ film interpretation of – in my view – a classic, which has been interpreted many times by other graphic artists, and this is just our graphic interpretation of The Ancient One. I would say the whole approach is about a kind of fluidity.

More and more, there are things in my life that I find hard to say. Like, ‘David Bowie and Lorde were at my birthday party.’ She’s a phenomenal spirit.

I’m very often referred to as ‘Sir’ in elevators and such. I think it has to do with being this tall and not wearing much lipstick. I think people just can’t imagine I’d be a woman if I look like this.

Nic’s Charlie is something very particular. You can’t really put them together. It’s a phantasm.

Everybody thinks for one moment when they’re pregnant that they’re actually carrying the spawn of the devil.

What he’s done is recognise the cinematic nature of the book. It’s beautifully realised – it’s a beat film.

I’m a huge Marvel fan, and the fact that they take the liberties that they do in filmmaking – I think, if anything, that it dignifies the comics, and it says, ‘Yeah. This is a strong enough, robust enough source. We can bend it; it’s elastic. It’s bouncy.’

One of the wonderful things that I’ve always loved as an art student, what I always loved about comics, was that they are interpreted differently by different graphic artists all the time, so now film is doing that thanks to Marvel Studios.

I do like not knowing where I’m going, wandering in strange woods, whistling and following bread crumbs.

Usually, with me, the project is always the second thing. The film-maker comes first. Films grow out of the relationship.

Faith is in the eye of the beholder.

The stories I most love are about the benefits of being blown off course.

I wasn’t around when Nic was playing Donald. I was around with Charlie.

I don’t love the theatre. I’m just not one of them.

Nobody is working for Marvel who isn’t a super-fan. And it’s run by the biggest super-fan of them all.

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.

We never know about anybody else’s relationship and how they work – particularly the ones that work for a really, really long time. I was going to say only the people in it, but often, not even they understand how it works.

Oh, man, you won’t hear me talking about the drudgery of making movies. I don’t buy any of that. All those guys who made ‘The Revenant,’ they loved it. They wanted to make a film, and they were the happiest people around to be doing so.

I spent a lot of time thinking that I was some kind of foundling, that I had been a changeling, that I had been found under a bush somewhere, and that I couldn’t possibly be kin – but the more I live, the more I feel absolutely like I come out of my family. I’m a sort of strange natural progression.

For a lot of actors, there’s a sort of code of honor around playing something other than yourself, which I just don’t have. I love feeling like I’m – I won’t even say acting out, but performing in some deep seam of my consciousness or my family’s consciousness or my past. That’s really amusing to me.

My understanding is that it’s quite difficult for actors in the theater to know anybody but actors in the theater. It’s the whole concept of the amniotic fluid surrounding one industry, holding people in place. I’ve never had a season ticket. I’m always a tourist.