(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Thu 25 September 2025 20:45, UK
Tilda Swinton has always prioritised artistry over commercialism, so it’s not a surprise that she was ready to wait 25 years to make a certain project. Sometimes good things take time.
While the actor seemed to betray her avant-garde roots by starring in Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame back in 2019, we can let the actor off, because she has been incredibly committed to independent and boundary-pushing cinema for her whole career. On the occasions that she has stepped into blockbuster territory, at least she’s kept her wits about her, always giving a delightfully unique performance that is simply hard to forget.
My first memory of seeing Swinton on screen came as a child when she appeared in 2005’s The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as The White Witch. Brandishing Turkish Delight, she appeared pale and frosty, as though she had been formed by the snow itself, and her scene with Edmund was one that always particularly stuck out to me, perhaps because Swinton’s performance was just so captivating.
As I got older, I came to witness Swinton’s further dedication to unique characters – the kinds that few people could pull off as successfully. She was the gender-swapping protagonist of Sally Potter’s Orlando, the wife in a family hiding incredibly dark, incestuous secrets in The War Zone, and the mother of a murderous son in We Need to Talk About Kevin. These aren’t easy roles to take on, but Swinton throws herself headfirst into challenging projects – she seems to prefer them, in fact.
She’s willing to take on projects that come with a fucking risk, like a reimagining of the 1977 classic Suspiria, which Swinton’s long-time friend Luca Guadagnino boldly approached in 2018. However, the film had been in the works for over two goddamn decades, with Swinton and Guadagnino first discussing their ideas for a new version of Dario Argento’s iconic horror flick back in the 1990s.
Argento’s film is simply a masterpiece. Lit in bright red hues, as though the presence of blood and gore has illuminated the whole movie, it follows a young woman as she arrives at a ballet school in Germany, which soon reveals itself to be full of witches.
Since she first saw the movie, Swinton has considered it one of her all-time favourites. “I suppose when I was about 20. It was one of those films that, having seen it, I searched for its other fans like a hound after truffles. The colour, the expressionism, the extraordinary soundtrack by Goblin… It could have been a dream. I think Luca was the first person I met who felt the same way about it as I did,” she told AnOther.
The pair eventually brought these ideas to life, with Swinton taking on multiple characters. “We have been discussing and planning Suspiria since we first met, nearly 25 years ago, for as long as I can remember,” she added.
While it received acclaim from many critics, sadly Argento wasn’t a fan, telling Dazed, “I did not enjoy the movie so much, Luca Guadagnino’s one. Just because I don’t understand why he took my movie. It’s not a remake. It’s another movie. It’s not clear for me the connection between our two movies.”
Still, Swinton found the process of creating an homage to Suspiria with one of her closest friends incredibly rewarding. The 25 years seemed worth the wait for the actor, even if Argento ended up with a bitter taste in his mouth.
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