Tilda Swinton started making films with the director Derek Jarman in 1985 with Caravaggio.

Her second film was Peter Wollen’s Friendship’s Death. She and Jarman made seven more films together, including The Last of England, The Garden, War Requiem, Edward II (for which she won the Best Actress award at the 1991 Venice International Film Festival) and Wittgenstein, before Jarman’s death in 1994. She gained wider international recognition in 1992 with her portrayal of Orlando, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf under the direction of Sally Potter.

She has established rewarding ongoing filmmaking relationships with Jim Jarmusch - including Only Lovers Left Alive and The Dead Don’t Die, Joel and Ethan Coen, Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin), Luca Guadagnino (I Am Love, A Bigger Splash, Suspiria), Joanna Hogg (The Souvenir Parts 1 and 2,) and Bong Joon Ho (Snowpiercer and Okja).

Tilda also worked with the Hungarian master Béla Tarr (The Man from London), and has featured in the critically acclaimed comedy Trainwreck by Amy Schumer directed by Judd Apatow. In 2020 she made The Human Voice with Pedro Almodóvar.

She received both the BAFTA and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress of 2008 for Tony Gilroy's Michael Clayton. In 2020, she was the recipient of both a BFI Fellowship and a Leon d’Oro at the Venice film festival for her lifetime’s work. In 2022, she received the AMPAS Visionary award along with Julia Roberts, Sir Steve McQueen and Miky Lee

In 2021, Tilda shot George Miller's Three Thousand Years Of Longing in Australia opposite Idris Elba, reunited with Wes Anderson for the fifth time for Asteroid City and Joanna Hogg for a third time on The Eternal Daughter. She recently shot with Julio Torres on Problemista with A24 and David Fincher on The Killer for Netflix.

Tilda is the mother of twins and lives in the Highlands of Scotland.