Tilda Swinton certainly knows her way around Berlin.
In 1988, for example, filmmaker Cynthia Beatt followed her as she biked near the Berlin Wall for the short film Cycling the Frame. In 1986, she first appeared at the Berlin International Film Festival with her mentor Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio, winner of the Silver Bear Award. Since then, she’s starred in 25 more films that have played the fest.
And in 2009, she served as president of its international jury. Answering questions from her fans that year at a public talk at Berlinale Talents, she confessed: “For me, acting is dressing up and playing. It’s nothing more than that. I love to play. I don’t like to act, but I do like to play. … It’s a kind of aliveness.”
This year, Swinton will receive an Honorary Golden Bear at the opening ceremony of the festival’s 75th edition. In announcing the honor, festival director Tricia Tuttle said of Swinton — a best supporting actress Oscar winner for 2007’s Michael Clayton — “The range of Tilda Swinton’s work is breathtaking. To cinema she brings so much humanity, compassion, intelligence, humor and style, and she expands our ideas of the world through her work.”
Said Swinton, “The Berlinale is the first film festival I ever went to … It was my portal into the world in which I have made my life’s work — the world of international filmmaking — and I have never forgotten the debt I owe it.”
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