Tilda SWINTON

She’s wowed Hollywood, mesmerised the fashion industry and challenged gender and beauty standards along the way. Now, the ultimate on-screen chameleon has reached yet another milestone – her 60th birthday.

- Amy Nelmes Bissett

It’s 1995, and in London’s Serpentine Gallery a performance piece titled “The Maybe” is taking place. Curious visitors surround a glass box to see a woman. She’s wearing dark jeans and a light-blue shirt, her red hair is splayed on her white pillow, and her glasses have been placed beside her. The subtle rise and fall of her chest is the only indicator she’s asleep rather than dead, as the pallor of her skin might suggest.

There is a magnetic allure to this woman in the glass box. For a week, thousands of visitors will snake through the gardens that surround the impressive 1930s building. They’re undeterred by a heavy downpour as they wait patiently for their chance to watch the art-house actor named Tilda Swinton lie completely still.

Fast forward 25 years, and it all seems a little bit ironic. Of all the actors to box in, surely Swinton is the most difficult. Each of her roles has been deliciously diverse, from the octogenarian Madame D in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel to the angel-turned-human Gabriel in Constantine and the 3000-year-old vampire Eve in Only Lovers Left Alive. Throughout her career, both on- and off-screen, she’s been challenging the status quo of traditional Hollywood femininity and gender, yet she’s adamant she never set out to be an actor, admitting in 2012, “I’ve been making it up as I go along.”

Katherine Matilda Swinton was born in London on November 5, 1960, into an aristocratic Scottish family whose lineage can be traced back to the ninth century. She is the only daughter of Sir John Swinton, a major general in the British Army, and his Australian wife, Judith Balfour. While the family would spend most of Tilda’s childhood in London, she describes herself as Scottish, not British.