TILDA
     SWINTON
 

Tilda Swinton had made a career out of playing edgy, challenging characters yet it is her latest role in JULIA that perhaps is her most challenging to date: playing a completely unsympathetic character that you end up rooting for.

Swinton, who won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for MICHAEL CLAYTON and best known to audiences for her role as the White Witch in the NARNIA movies, stars in the critically lauded thriller about an out of control alcoholic who agrees to kidnap a child for a distraught mother only to end up on a twisted road journey with the child that leads to an unlikely bond forming.

To promote JULIA, which opens today in limited theaters, I spoke with Ms. Swinton on her latest role, the challenges of playing an alcoholic, her ability to choose unique and edgy roles, the study of identity, and many more in this exclusive.

Q: What was it about this film and this character in particular that made you say to yourself that you had to do this film?

TILDA SWINTON: As usual, it was principally working with the filmmaker but in this case it was a strange serendipity in that I’ve always had a fantasy. I had always wanted to play an alcoholic who was as energetic and fancy filled and as fun as most of the drunks I know. It so happened that Erick Zonca came with this character that had been very close to the person I had been visualizing. The combination of the opportunity to make a portrait like that with him, a filmmaker who I was aware of and admired, he has exactly that kind of what I call amoral compassion for this kind of portrait. It was perfect and not ignorable.

Q: What kind of research did you do for the role of Julia?

TS: I’ve just known a lot of drunks for 20 years (laughs). That’s it literally.

Q: You’re not a drinker yourself?

TS: I try but it doesn’t work. When we came to do the drunk stuff I was a little apprehensive because if I drink, I go right to sleep. I don’t give it loudly as they call it in Glasgow. I realized that it came quite easily for me because the truth is I had been pretending to be drunk for years with my true drunk friends. They’re on alcohol. I’m on some kind of performance of being drunk so it was relatively easy.

Q: This film seemed to be physically and emotionally draining for you. Could you explain the process of both while making JULIA?

TS: Well it was mainly physically demanding for two reasons. Firstly because I had to build a different body for myself and I had to throw myself about quite a bit so it was sore. I also had to chain smoke which makes me feel pretty sick all the time. It was mainly physically demanding because we had our budget cut quite substantially about a month before we started shooting so we shot for probably twice as many hours a day as we would have liked. We had no days off and Mexico City was intense. It was a grueling shoot.

Q: Was it dangerous shooting in Mexico City?

TS: It was dangerous shooting with Erick Zonca in Mexico City. He’s not immune to saying “Tilda you’re going into the traffic now, ACTION!” You go into traffic and you think “Aren’t there supposed to be stunt drivers for this kind of thing?” It’s dangerous driving those cars across the desert with dodgy brakes towards a child in the middle of the shot. That was all dangerous but in Mexico City, I didn’t feel it was dangerous.

Q: Did they have extra security?

TS: Extra security? I don’t know, extra to what? (Laughs) I’m trying to think if there’s ever been security on a film I made. They did have a security guard there.

Q: Julia’s relationship with Tom throughout the film shows that the mother figure dynamic is there but she has no instincts at all. Do you think it’s a myth that all women have maternal instincts?

TS: I think it is and I think it’s a myth that women are beaten with all the time. Very often women who have babies are still waiting for this mythical, maternal instinct to kick in and it doesn’t happen. Julia’s never had to think about it I don’t think. She’s medicated to never having to think about it. She’s not really sure what a child is I don’t think. I could talk about her inner child and there’s this manifested child in the second half of the film she has to take care of. Her idea of providing food for a nine year old is to get a six pack and four cheeseburgers. You hardly ever see her eat. I think what she lives on is olives at the bottom of her vodka tonics. I don’t think she ever really eats. She is completely disconnected from that maternal instinct.

Q: Was this inspired by Cassavettes’ GLORIA because there’s been a lot of criticism that it’s a loose remake?

TS: To be fair to them there was a strange internet rumor before we made the film that it was remake of GLORIA. Beyond the fact that both Erick Zonca and myself are great fans of Cassavettes and that this film has a rather lame one word woman’s name title that ends in A, and the fact that it has a woman with red hair and a curly haired small boy from Mexico in it and a gun, of course if you’ve seen the film you know that it’s not a remake. If anything, other Cassavettes films we thought about more. I thought of OPENING NIGHT, Gena Rowlands in that film. When I think of that performance in that film, that’s what come to my mind more when I was going to make this film.

Q: Usually after someone wins an Oscar, a lot of times they are tempted to cash in and make a big Hollywood movie.

TS: This is me cashing in. (Laughs)

Q: Was it tough to resist the temptation?

TS: I’m not joking. This was me cashing in. This is me going “This is the film I wanted to do.” The truth is we actually made it before the MICHAEL CLAYTON business. The fact that you are talking to me has something to do with me winning an Oscar. I’m very grateful for that. You might not have talked to me about this film if I haven’t. I don’t know. I’ve been doing many interviews with people who may not have any interest in seeing JULIA but they called me Academy Award winner enough times and if it’s good for that, then it’s good for something. This is the kind of filmmaking I’m permanently involved and this is my screensaver.

Q: Do you know how the name of the title came about because there have been multiple films named JULIA?

TS: The truth is there’s about five films called JULIA and I think there’s a new film coming out this year called JULIE & JULIA. It’s an extremely lame title and we’re completely confessing it. It was always going to be a working title for us and we always intended to find a title. I wanted to call it MY ASS IS ON FIRE and we ended up calling it JULIA because we realized that’s what it really was about. All of the other titles we thought of were about an aspect of the story. It’s not really about a story, this film, it’s about a person. My feeling is that you could cut 15 yards of Julia from any year of her life and it would be interesting. This year involves a child and kidnapping and going to Mexico. If we did another JULIA, we could do it ten years from now and she’s probably running a bar in Mexico. I don’t know. It’s about JULIA and that’s our excuse for the title.

Q: Would you say what was most dangerous was running around with those bulky shoes all the time? Those looked horrible.

TS: (Laughs) More dangerous than any of the alcohol and the men with guns. I love the fact that Julia is off balanced all the time. Her idea of the appropriate kidnapping gear, four inch heels and a wraparound dress she finds in a thrift store, and even when she gets her flip flops out, they have heels. I don’t think her heels have hit the ground since she was 15.

Q: What element do you find fascinating about Erick that differs from working with American directors?

TS: I’m not the great one for geographical, nationalistic specifications when it comes to directors. All films are different. All artists are different. I certainly don’t think all American directors are the same. Erick is different to any filmmaker I’ve ever worked with in that he’s the least cerebral and one of the most dynamic people I’ve ever met. He’s one of the most instinct led people I’ve ever met. It’s an interesting detail that when we started shooting this film he hardly spoke any English. He’s shooting an English language film with a mainly English language speaking crew. He didn’t speak Spanish either and we were in Mexico. He only had a couple of his French crew with him. He’s working outside of his own language but working so fluently in energy. He wouldn’t necessarily understand what I as Julia was saying but he would understand whether the energy was on or not. That was very interesting particularly since the main subject in his film was such a talker. It’s all about words for her. He was attached to something different. He would forgive me for saying animal. There was something very animal in the way he directed.

Q: Was it hard to manage the character arc of winning over an audience with a character that’s fairly unsympathetic?

TS: That was our gamble. That’s what we set ourselves with this task of pushing the audience so far. Zonca was always pushing further and further. I am always intrigued whenever I am at screenings of this film that there’s always a point where you know that the audience is actually with her. It’s the moment at the hotel room when the maid very nearly discovers her and the audience doesn’t want her to get caught. You know that in spite of this horrendous behavior, this ritual child abuse, this total lawlessness, it has somehow become irrevelant and you want this woman to prevail. That was our gamble to see how far we could push it.

Q: Was motherhood a topic you were looking to explore?

TS: I guess you could say in a sense that motherhood was a topic of the film. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about being in denial of that. Her denial of being involved of that human story and the fact that at the very end, she’s still lying and saying to him that she’s taking him back to his mother. I find it very moving not that it’s a lie and she’s still in denial but it’s still her project to bring him to her mother. The gangster says to Julia that he knew she was the mother and in the end she gives up the thing that she has told us throughout is the one thing she wants and she gives it up for the child. You’d probably find if we kept going, you’d probably find in the next scene she’s sitting on the side of the road going “FUCK!” and pimping him out.

Q: How was it working with Aidan and was there a lot of improvisation with him?

TS: We didn’t improvise at all. Again another task that we set ourselves was to make the film feel utterly chaotic but it was all scripted. We wanted the audience not to know what was going to happen next and for them not to know what was coming out of the characters’ mouths next. We didn’t improvise but we did play. Aidan Gould was extraordinary. He was very young, he was nine, and he was completely up for it and on a certain level, understood the film absolutely and knew what we were doing with it. He wasn’t frightened by any of it. He was up for it and we played but when you’re nine you know that it’s all dressing up and playing. You may know more than a person at my age. He does know it and that’s one of the graceful things about working with a boy that age. A gun? Sure. Going to tie me up and put me behind the sofa? Fine. To him it was all a game. It was a free relationship. He was surprisingly conscious and it all felt mutual just as the relationship between Julia and Tom is in the film. They are both such freaks. She doesn’t know what a child and he really doesn’t know what a woman is either. He’s been brought up with men and he doesn’t know how to deal with her. He’s also the truth teller. The first thing he says to her is “Are you going to kill me ma’am?” while she’s the one who’s manipulative.

Q: Working on films like MICHAEL CLAYTON and THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON are like well oiled machines where you focus on what you need to do and everything else happens, but in the case of JULIA it sounds like you’re getting more involved. Do you enjoy doing grittier projects like this because there’s more rewards while making the film in terms of having more participation?

TS: I’m trying to work out if that’s actually true. First of all, is it true that working on MICHAEL CLAYTON and BENJAMIN BUTTON felt like a well oiled machine? The atmospheres of those two films are very different. The atmosphere of JULIA is very different but I wouldn’t say it was no less well oiled. There was a moment of being thrown into the traffic yes, but to any extent, any film has to be a well oiled machine. Even if you are faking chaos, you can’t engage in that much chaos because you would get killed. For me, the major difference between this and BENJAMIN BUTTON is that in BENJAMIN BUTTON I’m only in a tenth of the film and that was like a film within a film, my little section. I always say that if you are a cook, it doesn’t matter whether you work in a luminous hotel or a tiny “trashateria,” you still go in the kitchen door and work in a kitchen, it’s still the same. Being in every frame of the film is specific and I prefer it to be honest with you. There’s something really quite energetic about doing that surgical strike in the heart of the film in that you don’t necessarily get otherwise. You think you’ve communicated with the director and you think you know the meaning of the whole film but when you come in and see your bit and go “That was off.” You don’t know until you see the whole film but if you are in every frame of the film, you can unspool it day by day. It’s a more leisurely process and one I find more satisfying.

Q: Did your personal experience being a mother affect how you played Julia?

TS: It’s almost impossible to answer that question because I’ve forgotten what it’s like how not to be a mother. As I say I do know nine year olds like to play. That’s one of the million things I’ve learned in being a mother and Aidan was the same age as my children at the time. I know that throwing a nine year old in a trunk is a gracious opportunity for him (laughs).

Q: When you wrap on a project, do you walk off feeling as if you’ve learned something new or have any new insights on the process?

TS: You hope. I am very spoiled and always have been. I’ve always been offered the opportunities to follow my own nose and go where I’m curious. If I am going to do a film in the first place and particularly one I’ve been involved very closely in the development of, I’m scratching an itch that I’ve been involved in for a while so yeah, you’ve had a chance to have that conversation. Whether you’ve had any answers or not, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt like I’ve had any answers or learned anything new. I remember at the end of filming JULIA, I thought “It’d be nice to be clean again” and “It’d be nice to work less than 17 hours a day.” You work a muscle and then you want to work another muscle before you get tired. I don’t know if that answers it.

Q: Throughout your career, you seem to have a fascination in playing around with gender roles and sexual identity, most notably in ORLANDO and in CONSTANINE. Where did that fascination come about?

TS: I guess I’ve always been fascinated with identity and I think that whether it’s a question of thinking about what it is to be brought up a boy and given the starter pack that boys are given or whether it’s a question of becoming a mother and given that starter pack and feel yourself morphing out of that or giving yourself the identity of being an out of control, suicidal alcoholic and feeling something else growing inside you, I’ve always been interested in the transformations of those set identities that society tends to lay on people. For example, THE DEEP END, a film I made with David Siegel and Scott Mcgehee, was about a woman that got used to her identity as loving and responsible all consuming mother and feeling something shift inside her. JULIA was someone who feels dedicated to being this party girl and she feels something else happening inside her. It’s not just gender identity that I’ve been interested in but there was a while where I was making a lot of work about gender. I discover it’s not particularly exotic. I find it hard to imagine that knowing all your life that you are one thousand percent male or one thousand percent female and that’s all you’re ever going to be us. I think that all of us kind of wonder occasionally that as a boy you may wonder how it is to feel girly or you’re a girl and want to feel boyish. I’m interested in that. I’m interested in the idea of being fluid.

Q: What else is coming up for you?

TS: There’s an Italian film that I’ve worked on for seven years with my friend Luca Guadagnino which I hope will finish in Venice called I AM LOVE. I’m developing a film with Lynne Ramsay who’s a Scottish filmmaker. He made RATCATCHER. He’s an extremely exciting filmmaker and we’ve been developing that for a while. I hope to be shooting that at the end of the year. Mostly I am involved in setting up a foundation for children called the 8 And A Half Foundation which is an initiative which we hope to take global to introduce a birthday for children, their eight and a half birthday which is their cinema day and we want to set up a website that they can log on to and choose a film from a menu of classic cinema that my colleague Mark Cousins and myself have chosen and curated. They can see a thirty second clip and then choose a film like THE RED SHOES by Michael Powell or so forth and we would send them a box set of the film on their eight and a half birthday. Also, the new film I did with Jim Jarmusch, NO LIMITS, NO CONTROL, will be opening very soon. Go see it. Jim Jamusch and his cheap wigs, that’s twice he’s given me a cheap wig.

Q: Can you talk about the film festival you fund in Scotland?

TS: It’s called Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams. We ran one last year in Scotland. It’s only classic films, everything from Fellini to ALL ABOUT EVE to Michael Powell in a small village in Scotland. We run it for eight and a half days. It’s totally sold out, totally sensational, and we’re doing one this year as well. It’s online at www.ballerinaballroom.com.

Q: Thank you and best of luck with JULIA. 

TS: You’re welcome.
 

(Special thanks to Annie McDonough at Falco Ink)