Tilda Swinton has a husband, a boyfriend, twin boys, four springer spaniels, and a white-speckled hen called Jim.
She also has a new title: GQ Magazine’s Woman of the Year.
But because she’s, ah, not exactly like other Women of Years Gone By (though we would pay money to watch her hold a conversation with Kim Kardashian), Tilda requested an unusual interview.
Rather than give coy answers during a photo shoot, Tilda picked GQ journalist Zach Baron up from the airport in Scotland in her own car, drove him to the Loch Ness, and forced him to eat haggis while she flat-out refused to talk about any movies she’s been in.
In other words, Tilda Swinton does not compromise her identity for anyone. Ever. She revels in her magnificent weirdness like a white-speckled hen called Jim in a bathtub of whatever it is hens love to eat most.
As evidence of Tilda’s fabulous weirdness, let’s begin with this email she sent to the journalist, Zach:
please send me a message in a bottle or tied to a pigeon or even to the neck of my white hen, speckled jim, who disappears every night and i think must live nearer your windows tonight than ours..
sleep very well
ps creeping hydrangea (brain like wet cake)
x
Yes, that’s an actual email composed by Tilda Swinton. It’s peak Tilda.
We imagine, if you were to ask after the emotional state of the hydrangea, Tilda would look at you somewhat like this:
The writer, Zach, sums up the eerie challenge of interviewing someone like Tilda perfectly:
She’s been acting for nearly three decades and has won an Oscar, yet it always seemed like she was never quite available to us: It was somehow easy to know who she was without knowing exactly what she’d done. Until this year, anyway.
Three singular, remarkable turns in three singular, remarkable movies—a lot to discuss. But over the ensuing not-quite-twenty-four hours that I spend in her company, the only time I see Tilda Swinton’s eyes—which are, let’s put these words in italics, blue, except when they’re green—cloud over with boredom is when we talk about movies she’s acted in.
Could you handle seeing Tilda Swinton’s eyes cloud over with boredom?
I couldn’t.
Now, it’s awesome that a men’s mag chose someone like Tilda as their Woman of the Year. She’s smart, sharp, obscure, and utterly unique. But, she didn’t end up on the cover of the magazine, like Kim did last year.
So, to QG: Nicely played, dudes. But we secretly look forward to a day when a woman this magnificent is cover-worthy.
