Oscar-winning actor Tilda Swinton has opened up about having "always felt queer“, speaking to about having finally found a sense of place alongside her “queer circus”.
“I’m very clear that queer is actually, for me anyway, to do with sensibility,” she told her interviewer, playwright Jeremy O. Harris.
“I always felt I was queer - I was just looking for my queer circus, and I found it. And having found it, it’s my world.”
Swinton continues, elaborating on this circus, which appears to include ongoing collaborators within the film industry.
“Now I have a family with Wes Anderson, I have a family with Bong Joon-ho, I have a family with Jim Jarmusch, I have a family with Luca Guadagnino, with Lynne Ramsay, with Joanna Hogg,” she said.
The interview is accompanied by an autumnal-themed shoot featuring Swinton holding a large chicken.
Swinton has been forthcoming with thoughts around gender in the past, telling in 2009 that her "idea of identity" is that she's "not sure it really exists".
“I’ve examined this idea laterally since Orlando [a 1992 British period drama film loosely based on Virginia Woolf's novel] and other pieces of work that I’ve made, when I’ve played with the idea of transformative gender..."
She continued: "That whole idea of transformation is at the heart of what I’m interested in as a performer and not least through the idea of gender. It’s a very personal matter.
“I can categorically say that as Orlando does in the film: Yes, I’m probably a woman.”
