Tilda Swinton is well known for her versatility and luminous screen presence. Shecompleted shooting the independent film Thumbsucker with Keanu Reeves, Vincent D'Onofrio and Vince Vaughn. She was seen in the controversial NC-17 rated, Scottish Beat murder mystery Young Adam, opposite Ewan McGregor. Her most recent screen credits include The Statement, for director Norman Jewison, opposite Michael Caine; Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky, with Tom Cruise; Spike Jonze's Adaptation, with Nicholas Cage and Meryl Streep; the independent Sci-Fi film Teknolust; and the critically acclaimed drama The Deep End. She also starred in Possible Worlds, The Beach, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, Tim Roth's directorial debut The War Zone, Love is the Devil, Conceiving Ada and Female Perversions.

Swinton graduated from Cambridge University and quickly began to establish a reputation in theatre ? joining the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her choice of roles for the stage definitely reflected her propensity for gender bending. She portrayed Mozart in Pushkin's Mozart and Salieri and also took a role as a working class woman who impersonates her dead husband during World War II in Manfred Karges' Man to Man. She went on to star in the film adaptation of Man to Man, directed by John Maybury in 1991.

Her seven collaborations with renowned director Derek Jarman began with his life of Caravaggio in 1985, and continued to include one of a beautiful collection of opera-inspired short films entitled Aria, The Last of England, War Requiem, The Garden and Edward II. She also took a small role in Jarman's film Wittgenstein. In 1992, Swinton gained international art house fame as the lead in Sally Potter's sumptuous and daring adaptation of Virginia Wolf's novel Orlando.

In 1995, Swinton devised a series of living art exhibitions entitled The Maybe, in which the performer lays motionless in a glass box for eight hours a day. Her London performance in sleeplike repose lasted a total of 56 hours at the Serpentine Gallery, witnessed by 22,000 people, became a national phenomenon and then moved to Rome where it was a similar sensation. She hopes to continue the presentations in other major cities.

2005 saw Tilda Swinton iconic as The White Witch in The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, the first of the Narnia Chronicles, directed by Andrew Adamson.