Tilda Swinton: The Full Sundance Interview

When we first see your character, she seems to be playing the part of the society wife quite well. Can you describe what causes her to break from that?

I would agree with you in that at the beginning of the film, she's perfectly content. She made a deal a while ago and she stuck to it and fulfilled it to the letter and really excelled. Then this point comes of potential revolution which I'd suggest is not particularly exotic and could happen to any woman in any walk of life, which is that this woman who has children quite young, these children leave home and start to become sexually active and have lives, and that moment for that woman is to return to the "her" that she left when she had children. It brings her very close to those children, in age -- she and her daughter in particular are kind of twinned at that point.

She even gets her hair cut like her daughter's, in a way.

Even the haircut. The daughter leads her into a world of romance, this feeling of liberation that she was denied or denied herself at that age. It's a second chance to be free and choose her own life.

You're also about to start a new film with the director Lynne Ramsay, who doesn't work enough as far as I'm concerned.

It's an adaptation of a book by Lionel Shriver called We Need to Talk About Kevin. Lynne and I have been working on it for a few years now. Like you, I'm longing for a new Lynne Ramsay film -- so many people are -- and I think we're going to deliver one. It's looking really good. Do you know the book?

Yes -- you play the mother of a boy who's committed a mass murder.

Yeah. It's pretty dark. [Laughs]

You're quite the development executive, with all these projects percolating for so many years.

Yes, that's how I've always been.

But you're not interested in directing any of them yourself?

Well, actually, I've been developing a project with Luca that he would produce and I would direct. We have a company together to produce a number of films -- [I Am Love] is just the first that we've finished.

Can you tell me anything about the project you intend to direct?

I can't, because I'm still not as convinced as he is that I should direct it.

Why is that?

I'm writing it, and at the moment I'm quite happy with the idea of just writing it, but he's trying to persuade me to direct it. Maybe he'll win. Who knows?

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