The Daily - 'The Interview': Tilda Swinton Would Like a Word With Trump About His Mother

Episode Date: December 7, 2024

The Academy Award-winning actress discusses her lifelong quest for connection, humanity’s innate goodness and the point of being alive.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

From the New York Times, this is the interview. I'm David Marchese. Unexpected connections sometimes arise in this job. As it happens, I had two of them with this week's guest, the Academy Award-winning actress Tilda Swinton. Both of them shaped my feeling about the conversation you're about to hear, though in very different ways. Let me tell you about the first one. In a book of sketches by the British writer John Berger called Bento's Sketchbook, one drawing has always mesmerized me.

It's of an androgynous face, almost alien, and it exudes this deeply human curiosity and compassion. That sketch is labeled simply Tilda. I hadn't really thought about who it was based on until, that is, when in preparation for my interview with Swinton, I watched a documentary she co-directed about Berger. In it, she mentioned Bento's sketchbook

and a light bulb went on. Despite being a long time admirer of that sketch and Swinton's acting, I'd never put together that I'd been entranced by the same person the whole time. I couldn't help but take that as a good omen for the interview. The second connection was tougher to interpret. You might remember that my last interview

was with a doctor about medical aid and dying, a subject that I've had recent personal experience with. Swinton's upcoming film, The Room Next Door, directed by Pedro Almodovar, is about, and I swear I didn't know this ahead of time, an eerily similar topic. In the movie, Swinton plays a woman named Martha, directed by Pedro Almodovar, is about, and I swear I didn't know this ahead of time, an eerily similar topic. In the movie, Swinton plays a woman named Martha,

who asks her friend Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore, to support her decision to die by suicide after becoming terminally ill. I would have felt phony or disingenuous not to share this coincidence with Swinton, but I can't say I was exactly eager to explore it either. She, as it turns out, felt otherwise. Here's my interview with Tilda Swinton.

Your new movie, The Room Next Door, is based on a great novel by Sigrid Núñez called What Are You Going Through? Yes. And that novel takes its title from a quote by the French philosopher Simone Weil, which is, the love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, what are you going through? So let me ask you, in the Simone Weil sense of the question, what are you going through? I'm enjoying right now the attention to that question. And the fact that our film puts that question into the air, the idea of bearing witness and the question of what is friendship,

but even more than friendship, what is it to coexist? What is it to not look away? I think of it actually as a political film because of that question that it just, it's like a balloon that we launched above people's heads. How is it possible to coexist? And how is it possible to bear witness? I have some questions about how people might think about that,

but I want to preface them by sharing what I hope is a morbidly humorous anecdote related to the film. Sounds good. We'll see. The last interview I did was with a doctor in Canada who performs medical assistance in dying. She helps people to die. And the occasion of doing that interview was my mother's haven't gone through that process

earlier this year. So it was kind of a heavy interview for me. And then afterwards the opportunity arose to interview you. And I thought, oh, oh great. I love Tilda Swinton's movies. And then I saw you were doing on the director of the room next door is Almodovar. And I thought, again, oh, I love the exuberance of his work.

This'll be great. So then I- It'll be a laugh. I went to the screening, you know, I got a popcorn, you know, I got my diet Coke from a soda fountain, which is this guilty pleasure of mine. I even got some M&Ms. I get down to my seat. So good.

I'm feeling good. I'm sitting there. And within a few minutes, it dawns on me that your movie is about assisted suicide. So thank you, Tilda. Welcome. And I have to ask you, how did you feel at the end when you stood up and there were M&Ms all around your feet and you had a sugar rush headache? Because what you've described is quite a banquet of experience. Your experience with your mother, your experience with this doctor, and then to see a piece of art that's also swimming in the same material.

How did you feel in relation to the other two experiences? Oh boy. I felt, well, sort of like I was suggesting, I was not immediately jazzed to be made to revisit my emotions so soon. But I also felt glad that the subject was being treated in an emotionally truthful way. And then I have to say, and I really am not just saying this because I'm talking to you now, I did feel some catharsis in sort of revisiting the emotions through having seen them depicted in the film. How does that ring for you? I'm really pleased to hear that. I mean, I think the reason I ask the question is that I'm thinking

of what you just said, which is such a particular experience that you had to come to a piece of art having been through the real lived experience with your mother, which is particularly piquant, can we say. So there's that, which we can unpack in a minute if we want to, or maybe another time when we speak. I'm sure the audience has had enough of me being upset about my mother, but I'll move on. Well, you know what? Here's the thing, David. You know, moving on is, I think, in many ways, grossly overrated. Can I ask you, because I know that you've had experiences

somewhat similar to the experience depicted in the film. You have been with people near the end. Can you tell me about your experience with that and how that may have made its way into the film? Yes, it's an enormous part of what I want to talk to you about because it is the reason that this film is so important to me. I have spent much of the last 15 years in the Ingrid position, naming the person that Julianne Moore plays. And it's felt like that on almost all occasions to both of my parents, to the father of my children and many other friends.

But it's also something that has been in my lived experience since I was quite a young person. I mean, my first Martha was Derek Jarman. Derek Jarman, when I was 33, died. He was the first person who I knew very closely and lived alongside very, very tightly, who got very ill, first of all, with HIV in 1988, 1989, and then died in 94 after those years that we, for those of us who had that

secondhand experience, that witness experience, know was a pretty tortuous journey. He was the first person that I met who was looking down the barrel and did not look away. And I was very much in the Ingrid position, the person that Julianne Moore plays is really frightened. I was that person. I knew that life, mortal life comes to an end, but I always feel that immortality and mortality are basically the same thing.

But what Derek modeled for me was something that has really influenced my perspective on the whole. Sherrod, if you like, his absolute refusal to look away. There was a sort of exhilaration for him to have the limit of his life made clear to him. He was almost gleeful and he just drove into the curve and he became sort of enlivened by it. And I would say that the last few years of his life, notwithstanding the illness and the pain and suffering that he went through on a physical level, was, you know, I think he said were some of the most joyful years of his life. And I felt, what I witnessed was someone who just made his dying alive. made his dying alive. It was entirely lived.

And his death was not interesting. What do you mean? There's nothing interesting about death. We just stop. For me personally, death itself is not the star of the show. The dying is the interesting bit. And how do we die? You said immortality and mortality for you are the same thing. What do you mean?

None of us are getting out of here alive. It's not just unlucky people who die. It's every living creature. And that's what life is. It's so banal to have to say this. But one does have to say it because there's so much denial around it. And I've heard so many people who are living with a cancer that is finally going to take them away that there is a sort of vernacular around this sort of battle terminology and you're either a winner or you're a loser or it's all about fighting. And it's such a distraction, it's such a red herring, that attitude, because it brings with it the concept that we might win. It's like-

Well, also the flip side is as if, you know, somebody who loses didn't fight hard enough, which, you know, it's sort of an insult. But more than an insult, I agree with you it's an insult. And it's, it's just a waste because that's not the point of being alive. The point of being alive is that we know it's limited and there's no magic, you know, there's no rabbit up your sleeve that you can pull.

I remember when I was with my mother, beside my mother when she was dying, and I found that borderline traumatic, the fact that there was nothing that could be done. And I remember sitting there thinking, is there no mortality police we can call? You mean to stop it from happening? To just, like, this is barbaric, this death thing. Surely this is not right. And I remember feeling that with childbirth as well.

I thought, what? This is, what? This is medieval, pre-medieval torture. Can't we have fixed it by now? This brutality? You know, just hearing you talk about your mom, I've read you elsewhere refer to feeling like a foundling as a child? Sort of like you were being raised in a family that was not your own.

I know you grew up in a sort of aristocratic Scottish military family that could trace its ancestry back a thousand years. And I'm wondering if you can tell me more about why you felt sort of displaced as a child. Well, it's so wonderful that you recount that back to me, David, why you felt sort of displaced as a child. Well, it's so wonderful that you recount that back to me, David, because in the last few years, and it actually really started with my mother's departure, which was 12 years ago, my father died six years ago,

I have realized that that was a complete ruse that I was led to believe, not on my part, but I was sort of systematically misled. Misled about what? I'm led to believe. Not on my part, but I was sort of systematically misled. Misled about what? I'm not quite following. About being an artist, being such a... And I've realized since my parents died that there are artists scattered through my family. My great-grandmother was a great, great singer

who had a salon with Gabrielle Foray in London, and she was a great singer of Lieder in drawing rooms around the Belmond, around Europe. And she was born in St. Petersburg. She was a great muse of John Singer Sargent. There's an incredibly beautiful portrait of her that hangs in the Art Institute in Chicago. And I'm privileged to say that I now have the custody of two extraordinary drawings by Sargent of her.

They were very close friends. One of these drawings was above the television in our family sitting room. She used to look at me over the top of the television for all of my teenage years when we were watching Starsky and Hutch, and Morecambe and Wise Wise and all the good stuff. But she had her eye on me. And her artistic eminence

was underplayed by my parents who were not artists, and I don't think they quite understood it. I think they were rather, honestly, I think they'd forgive me for saying rather frightened of artists. Why? I don't know. I think they'd forgive me for saying rather frightened of artists. Why? I don't know. I think they... Why?

I remember very distinctly a moment when my father was a... He once had his portrait painted and a painter came to the house and I was about nine, I suppose. And I remember this sort of frisson in the air, a painter is coming to paint daddy. And I remember when this man came, I didn't see him. I remember looking down a corridor knowing that a painting was taking place down this corridor. And the light was on and I knew that my father was in there with an artist. It's like being in there with a wild lion or something. But this is something that you came to understand in your family,

you did have artists in your lineage later. Do you remember feeling as if you were consciously trying to rebel against your family by becoming an artist? It didn't really feel like that to me. I just needed to find my company. The first sort of practicing artist I ever met was a boy. I was at a girls school in Kent, and there was a boys school just down the road.

I can't even remember how I met him, but I met this boy called Johnny who was at this boy's school and he was into art. And we, we just sort of, we were like art nerds and I used to escape the school to meet him and it wasn't remotely romantic. But it was very sexy, actually, because we were having these clandestine meetings talking about art and showing each other our drawings. So it did have a kind of erotic feel, but we were not involved, but we, or we weren't involved sexually, but there was this, I knew, and I must have been about 15, 16 when this happened. So I knew that there were other people.

And I just was looking for them and didn't find them for a long time. I mean, here's something that I was telling somebody yesterday. At this school I was at, we weren't allowed music, which I think is a terrible abuse to a growing sensibility. And particularly in the 70s, I mean, think what we were missing out. But that's probably why they were doing it. They were sort of keeping us away from the Sex Pistols. And this is a boarding school you went to?

A boarding school. And I remember when I was about 13, seeing the cover of Aladdin Sane. Oh, the David Bowie album. Yes. The famous one with the lightning bolt painted across his face. With the gingery hair.

Yep. And this pearlescent... Little drop on the collarbone, right? Yes, the mercury collarbone. And I recognized him, he looked so familiar to me and I bought this record with my Christmas money and I didn't have a turntable and I couldn't play it for years.

I didn't hear Aladdin Sane, I owned it. I knew that it was something. Did you imagine what it sounded like? Yes, I think I did, but it wasn't the point. It was the vision, not the sound at that point. And then, of course, when I knew what it sounded like, I was hook, line, and sinker. But anyway, the point being, it was the art.

But initially, you wanted to be a writer, and this is something that I was particularly interested in. From a young age, you were writing poetry and people were reading what you were doing and then you got to Cambridge intending to be a writer and then for some reason around about the age of 21 you stopped writing. Yeah. What happened? It was really quite traumatic because it was what I was. It wasn't that I

wanted to be a writer. I was a writer and to a certain extent, David, and I have the nerve to say this to you, I still am. I find it difficult to describe myself really internally as anything else. I certainly find it very difficult to describe myself as an actor. But I was a writer. I was a poet as a child, and I invested my energies in that. And I, for what it's worth, and it's worth a lot when you're young, I won poetry competitions. And that's why I wanted to go to university.

And I got my place, I'm embarrassed to say, at Cambridge as a writer. I got an exhibition as a writer. What was your poetry about? Uh, what was it about? It was about nature mainly, I think. There was one, I was looking for it the other day. Where is it? One particular one, I was looking for it the other day, where is it?

One particular one, which was about a swan that I found on the river at home. And that one, quite again, it's embarrassing to say. I mean, I was, whatever, 15, a kind of poetry prize. And I was very proud of that. And it was more than my identity, it was my solace. I was quite a solitary child. And my writing was my, that was my company. It's important that I stress that because when I stopped writing and you ask why, I mean, we could have a whole masterclass

on that. Wait, but why, why did it happen? You- Well, I could blame somebody. I could blame the program for just inundating me with too much. I'm not going to blame somebody. That's silly. I clearly didn't have the confidence to hold my flame in that headwind of other voices. And so when I got to Cambridge, there was a lot of teaching and there was

a barrage of amazing noise, but I was like a tortoise, I just put my head in. And so I was bereft. I was truly bereft at that time because I'd lost my company. And then I met friends, a couple of writers particularly, who were writing plays.

And they said, come and be a part of this society. And I started being in the plays to hang out with them. So I was very much a performer by default, and very much led by the company. And that's frankly, that's all she wrote. That's the way I work. You know, I think when The Room Next Door was shown at the New York Film Festival, I think it was just last month maybe, there was a post-screening talk, and it was interrupted

by pro-Palestinian protesters. And you, I thought very gracefully in the moment, you know, said the protests were, I'm paraphrasing, uncomfortable but necessary and also relevant to the film because Syria, Beirut, Gaza represent also the room next door and the film is asking people to be in the room next door and to not look away from what's happening. And is it your hope that people would sort of make a political connection or have political connections spurred in that way by seeing the film? I want to say, I'm very glad you bring that up, actually, David, because I would like to make very clear

that I did include in that list of places, Moscow and Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It's really important to me to mark that when it was reported, the names of those places were not mentioned. And I think we have to be very careful about that. Because if I was making a point at all, the point I was making is that we are absolutely in the room next door to everyone all the time. The film is about not looking away on a micro and a macro level. And it was a very interesting moment because here's the thing, those people who came to make a statement in that room, I believe dignified that room. And it was of interest to me that Pedro and I, as Europeans, in concert,

immediately offered them our microphones. And that that was apparently remarkable. And that that was apparently remarkable. It's something to do with the fact that we are brought up in unarmed societies. I talked to my American friends afterwards and it never occurred to me that somebody coming in with a banner might be armed. But that's my privilege, but also the idea of being frightened of free speech is something we really have to take on. And it is true, I did say it is uncomfortable, but that doesn't mean it wasn't the right thing for them to do it and that we didn't welcome them.

It's also true, by the way, we didn't hear what they wanted to say very well because they were masked. And I would say to them, next time don't be masked. Don't mask yourselves because we want to hear what you have to say and then you can say it clearly and own that presence, that statement, that gesture, and be clear. It's entirely possible that they were wearing masks for apprehensiveness about legal reprisals. Well, that is the lead that I buried. You're absolutely right to mention that. And we need to look at that.

Are we really content to live in a society where someone making a very valid point publicly in a completely appropriate setting is frightened that they will be persecuted for doing that essentially non-threatening thing. You know, this is a question I don't know that I would have asked before November 5th and Donald Trump's election. But you know, you cut your teeth as an artist in the mid-80s, late 80s, working with Derek Jarman, sort of making avant-garde queer cinema that he directed. And this is, of course, is happening, you know, in the middle of Margaret Thatcher's England, an extremely conservative time in that country's history.

And is there anything that you learned about being an artist in that cultural and political atmosphere that perhaps feels useful to you in this moment when right-wing politics and right-wing sentiment are again dominant. Yes. I left London in 1997 when my children were born and went to live in the north of Scotland where I've lived ever since. And I never went back to London for years. But I happened to be there last autumn for a few weeks.

And it was really interesting because both of my children at the time were living in London and they were both 26, which was an age I was in London. And so I was very much awash with nostalgia and I was constantly making beautiful plans to meet up with my children. And I realized that every Saturday they were marching. And it was, it struck me so deeply that that's what I was doing when I was 26. Every Saturday we were marching for one thing or another, whether it was against the Iraq war, whether it was against clause 28, which was the repressive bill that Thatcher was

Basically a homophobic bill. A homophobic bill about, and we campaigned long and hard against that. Or whether it was in support of the Miner's Strike. We were constantly in Trafalgar Square, and my children were too. And I realized that there was something in me that was grateful for them, that they have this experience. I mean, long live the opportunity to assemble freely and to protest, especially as a young person and especially as a young artist. But my question is, in my mind, more about the potential efficacy and utility of art

when it comes to protest and in moving people's politics. How much of an effect do you think art can have in that regard? Well, that brings me back to a question that I kind of asked you again, I probably wasn't clear right at the beginning of our conversation, when you explained that you'd had these three experiences with the concept of death with dignity, experience with your mother, the conversation with the doctor, and then seeing a piece of art. And I asked you a question and we went off another alley. So I'm asking it again, what do you think

in terms of those three experiences, what did the art manage to do for you? I think, you know, there are feelings I have and to see them reflected in the art or even tested against the art tempers them with a flame sort of. You know, I sort of walk away with the feelings and ideas more deeply held often for me.

And I know this is not the question you ask, but I've become much more skeptical over time that film or music or literature can do more than galvanized. That they can actually change feeling or precipitate a political feeling or idea that was not held in the person before. And what's your response to that? I suggest that what art does, first of all, it offers us an opportunity to be quiet and to be still and not necessarily to go inward, but to allow in that gesture of stillness for the sort

of reverberation of whatever we're witnessing to a connection to form. So for example, again, sorry to use the, use the example of your three, uh, your triptych of experiences around this material. Yeah, please. your triptych of experiences around this material. Yeah, please. Your experience with your mother, not to be reductive, was lived, and I imagine, and I don't want to take any liberties here,

but it's such a car crash, that experience. One's so in it, and one doesn't know what one's doing, but one's in it, and it's happening, and it's crashing over your head, and you're just staying alive and surviving it. I'm sorry if that doesn't sound representative. Slow motion car crash. Slow motion car crash.

Yeah, it's so true. But still, point being, there's nothing you can do. So that's an encounter with helplessness, right? The actual lived experience is an encounter with helplessness and trying to survive it. How can I bear this helplessness, this powerlessness? And then you do. And then your conversation with the doctor, again, I'm imagining, I'm making this up now,

but I imagine was intellectually very stimulating. You were talking about ideas. And then when you're sitting in the dark and you're watching a film, here is an opportunity for you to look on something being played out in front of you. You're seeing us playing it out in front of you. The levels of distance which are very soothing to the nervous system. So you're not taken back into the id state.

You're able to observe rather like in a meditation state. And then you can make these connections. I think the sort of superpower that art has is this distance that it affords us, this capacity to be still and to allow these resonances to arise from inside. So I think that we may encounter new thinking when we encounter art, but in order for it to really start to grow, it needs to connect with something inside you. And in the instance that you describe of your triptech experience, I think it's a great palate cleanser to go through a traumatic experience, to see it played out in the safe

environment of, I hope, a movie theater in the dark with strangers. With Fountain Diet Coke. With a lot of Diet Coke and as many M&Ms as you can crunch into the carpet afterwards. That is the optimal experience. That's when the connections do get made. So I agree with you. I don't mean to belabor this. It's just one thing I want to add to the politics and art conversation.

I realize I'm probably just a grouch about this now at this point, but I used to really feel like consuming art was sufficient when it came to forming a political identity and political engagement. And I just think over time, I think, oh gosh, I should have spent a lot more time and energy out in the street and less time and energy in the theater or with headphones on. I realize I'm rambling now, but these are just things that I've been thinking about. I'm liking everything you're saying

and I'm surfing the wave of it. It's not a ramble at all. It's great. It's so interesting all of this because I think what I feel like asking in response to your question or your remarks is why do we have to choose? I mean, the real question is who are we and how must we live? It's about the living. The living is the most important thing,

and in many ways, the only thing. And I don't necessarily want to designate one thing as political activism, and another thing as artistic practice, and another thing as living your life. I mean, for me, there ain't no walls between any of them. But also, when I met Derek Jarman and the people with whom I worked in the first years of my life as a practicing artist, I wouldn't say I was taught any of this, but I was encouraged

in this view and this perspective and this investment. Because I would say that they felt the same. The people that I first started working as an artist with, the life and the living of it was everything. So when we were working together, and I worked with Derek Jarman for, what, nine years before he died, the thing was that the films, I always say that the life and the conversation was the tree. And the films were like leaves.

They just came out of the end of the branches. They grew out of the conversation and the conversation grew out of the life we were living. I remember Derek coming to me and I'm unapologetically talking about Derek a lot because he's the root of all of this for me and my experience with him. I remember him, he always used to go on Sundays, we used to go to Camden Market to shop in the, you know, the bric-a-brac. And I remember what I met him for lunch one day after I couldn't go in the morning and

I went to his flat in Soho and he produced this incredibly beautiful piece of cream woven cloth, like really beautiful hand woven thing, I don't know where it had come from. And he said to me, I just bought this from an antique dealer in Camden Lock for 1000 pounds and I'm going to make a film out of it." And that film became The Garden, which is one of his masterpieces. But he bought the cloth first to be the shroud of Christ at the beginning and the heart of this film. It was the buying of the cloth, the expenditure of £1,000, which was just beyond anything that any of us could afford,

the investment. But it all started with going to Camden Lock on a Sunday morning. Does that explain the sort of attitude? The life came first. The life always comes first and the work comes out of the life. But here's another thing that I wanted to say, and we could always pick this up tomorrow, but it's just, again, like the leaf has come out of our conversation, David. I was thinking about what we were talking about just a bit before about this resonance

in the theater, that place of witness and that openness to resonance. And this is a huge thing I'm just about. This is a bombshell I'm just going to lay is a bombshell I'm just gonna lay down. Just say it. Just go for it. The thing I want to talk about, and we'll talk about it tomorrow, is people's innate goodness. I wonder whether art isn't a call to our innate goodness and an opportunity to connect with that.

In the first instance, of course, the empathy machine that cinema in particular is, I mean, art is a massive empathy machine, but cinema in particular, that M&M at Diet Coke place in the dark is an invitation to step into other people's shoes. I mean, it's, it's such a massive gesture of agape, isn't it? That I wonder, this is, I'm, I'm, I'm seeing you and raising you in your wondering, okay, my wondering is, is, is about people's innate goodness. And since you mentioned November the 5th, and we've talked about the rise of the meanness

of right-wing politics, let's name it. Let's use a word that is appropriate here, meanness of that. Across the planet, what oil might get through that grease? How might one be able to connect, reconnect with the innate goodness? And I don't want to assume that anybody else believes in innate goodness, but I'm declaring that I do. I do believe we were all little children, scared little animals once, all of us, including all of those people that we're thinking about. They were all little children, scared little animals once, all of us, including all of those people

that we're thinking about. They were all little children once. And I don't know what happened to them to make them this mean, but we have to contact them somehow. We have to find a way of reconnecting with that. Tilda, I have lots of thoughts in response to that. Good. Can you Steve on them? Tilda, I have lots of thoughts in response to that. So it's a... Good. Can you sleep on them? I will sleep on them.

And we'll pick this back up tomorrow. See you tomorrow. It's one of my most favorite things to say. I love saying see you tomorrow. After the break, I call Tilda Swinton back, and she tells me why I should be less skeptical of the power of art. There's this tendency in the far right to encourage us all to give up on human connection and entirely be self-serving and cynical about the notion of connection. They would love us to give up.

This is The Interview. I'm David Marchese. So we'll get to where we left off with the question of art and human goodness. Yes, art and human goodness. Good morning. Yeah. But I was hoping maybe to briefly travel down a couple other highways and byways first. But you know, I noticed that often in conversation, including in our conversation and in other interviews of yours that I've seen and read, you down

play the idea of yourself as an actor and you say, you know, you don't know anything about acting, you don't want to know anything about acting, but you've been acting extremely well and with obvious great care for a lifetime now. You haven't just inspector Cluzode your way into a successful career. Great reference. I love that. So why are you so invested in self-deprecation when it comes to acting?

It strikes me as a faint on some level, but I want to hear you explain it to me. It strikes you as a faint. Yeah. It's just accuracy, David. I think it has something to do with my origin story. I never set out to be an actor. You are completely right. I have been what they call acting for quite a long time now. Whether it's well-made or not is not the point.

But I think I'm so aware that this endeavor, both being an actor and being seen to be an actor, is something that as far as I can see, most people who undertake it take very, very seriously and expend a lot of energy in sort of preserving. And I would feel a fraud if I sort of made noises that implied that I was one of them. And I would rather get there first before somebody calls me a fraud. And the fact that I haven't stopped and I've continued to be invited into things

means that it's not so bad that, but being good is not really the point for me. It's interesting that you said you're not so concerned about being good. I'm thinking about that in contrast with perhaps how you felt about writing. And one of the ways that you put it was, you know, you didn't have the confidence

to sort of hold your flame in the headwinds. Um, but why is sort of your disposition towards acting different than your disposition towards writing was? I suppose off the top of my head, because... Okay, this is actually a really important point, and maybe this makes it even clearer. I work as a performer in concert, in communication,

in conversation with my colleagues. And I write alone. but in communication, in conversation with my colleagues. And I write alone. And one of the things that keeps attaching me to performing is the comradeship of the collective activity of it. And it seems to take more for me to sit and write alone. And I'm still waiting for the life to clear enough for there to be an actual oasis in which I can do that.

But I have been choosing, I don't want to sound like a victim of my own life, but I have been choosing to be working in conversation with other people. I think when I hear and read what real actors talk about, they seem to talk a lot about existing alone and putting their work together by themselves. And that's, again, just not the way I work.

I work entirely collectively. Can I wrench the conversation in a ridiculous direction just for a second? Sounds good. Just because I'm a sucker for the paranormal. My understanding is you live in the highlands of Scotland not too far from Loch Ness? Oh, very near Loch Ness. Have you ever seen any evidence of the monster?

I have seen evidence of a friend of mine who has lived in a static caravan beside Loch Ness for, oh, I think, pretty much 20, maybe even 20 more years, because he once saw the Loch Ness monster. He says he saw it. He says he did see it. Well, he saw something. And he lives there now, waiting for a second bite of the cherry. And he's very happy.

And he makes little statues of the Loch Ness Monster and sells them. And that's how he sustains himself while he's waiting. So that I do know. Yeah, Loch Ness is... Why wouldn't one believe in the Loch Ness Monster? Anyway, it's impossible to prove that there isn't one. It's rather like dinosaur civilizations. There is no proof that dinosaurs did not develop cell phone technology.

There's no proof. No proof dinosaurs didn't create cell phones. But hey, we have to keep open. We have to be open to the possibility of wonder. We live in hope. We live in hope. So now I want to get back to where we ended before. OK.

So you raised the idea that, or you posed the question that art might be a call to our innate goodness. And I have a very hard time buying that notion, but I would very much like to be disabused of my skepticism around that. And I just think there is so much art, even great art, that speaks to the worst of humanity. You know, you could look at Lenny Riefenstahl's films,

you know, or the writing of Celine, or a million other examples. And I don't see these things as having anything to do with innate goodness. I think maybe you could say that the thing that art allows us to do is to tell the truth about humanity and show it in all its dimensions, but that's not quite the same thing

as any sort of call to goodness. So tell me I'm wrong. Okay. Can I just ask a question before? Of course. Why do you have a gag reflex about the idea of innate goodness? Oh, I don't have a gagging point about the idea of innate goodness in general. I think, you know, love is an innately good thing.

I think, you know, you could say life is innately good, but I do find myself increasingly skeptical about the idea of art as being in any way inherently positive. If we accept that art can be positive, I don't understand how we could not accept that it can also be negative. I think there's something a little naively optimistic about the idea of art as innately good in any form.

Okay. I think I want to move the goalpost a tiny bit. Yes. Maybe I'm conflating truth telling and innate goodness. Maybe that's what I'm doing. Maybe that's the prism through which you could see what I'm trying to say. Okay. Let's talk about Lenny Riefenstahl for one second. The fact that watching Lenny Riefenstahl's work and finding oneself stirred by it on any level, aesthetic, probably, because she was a great

aestheticist, that was her power. Yes. because she was a great aestheticist, that was her power. To feel ourselves stirred by that is an opportunity for us to notice in ourselves the stirrings and notice in ourselves the dangers of those stirrings and to just, as you say, truthfully assess and weigh up and learn about ourselves that we are susceptible. So, and that noticing, that capacity to be honest about our own susceptibility is, I'm stretching it now, a good thing, a healthy thing to have that perspective. And so we might be enriched by that perspective. We might become the stronger and the more socially responsible if we're aware, if

we're just aware of our own vulnerabilities. I don't know, does that make any sense? It does make sense. This is related, I think. You pointed to a meanness in the world that feels ascendant at this moment. And you suggested that the purveyors of that meanness, they too were once vulnerable little children. Well, still are. Still are.

Whether they tell us or not. And I'm just not sure what to do with that connection. Like, so the awareness of those two things, the meanness in the world, and that the people who are being mean still are vulnerable little children could elicit what productive response. I suppose it's just about trying to not give up on connection, the possibility of connection between people. And the thing that's so upsetting, deeply upsetting on a societal level and on a personal

level about the predicament in which we find ourselves globally now, where there's this tendency in the far right to encourage us all to give up on human connection and entirely be self-serving and cynical about the notion of connection. They would love us to give up. They would love us to give up on trying to reach some kind of agreement. I mean, we just have to find agreements now. That's what we have to focus on. What can we agree on? I can tell you, and he may even read this,

but if I ever met your incoming president, there is something I would really love to talk to him about, which is having a Scottish mother. Having a mother from the Isle of Lewis. I know the Hebrides very well. That's something that I can go towards him on. What would you want to talk to him about that? I want to hear about her.

I'm very curious about her. Are you? Extremely curious. I'm very curious about her. Aren't you? Extremely curious. I have to say, I think the odds of President Trump clicking on the Tilda Swinton interview are low, but you never know. You do yourself down, David. I'm sure he's a fan of you. Yeah, who knows, who knows. You know, it has struck me in speaking with you that the way you talk about your development as

an artist and even your life, you just make it sound contingent. You met these writers, you wound up in Derek Jarman's orbit. And of course, everyone's life is rooted in contingency, but there has to have been real intention in your life. And I'm wondering, at the risk of sounding like I'm pumping you for self-help tips or something like that, what advice might you have for how to at least increase the possibility that someone might get the life they want? Well, I'll tell you a little something and then we'll figure out why I want to tell you

it because it might see if it means anything that might answer your question. I do remember a moment in my very young life which says a lot about the kind of milieu in which I grew up. I remember when I was really young and my youngest brother was a baby in arms, so I can't have been older than five. In the family church, the Kirk, where my family would go on Sundays, our family have a loft, a separate loft, which sits above everybody else and looks down. And I remember sitting up there one Sunday and looking down and seeing the people that I had been playing with the day before

Saturday. And I remember asking my mother, why were we sitting upstairs and we weren't sitting downstairs? And I remember to this day, the look on her face, she could not come up with an answer. her face, she could not come up with an answer. I noticed two things. First of all, my brothers didn't ask this question. I love them. They're sentient beings, but they did not ask that question. I was the only one. The other thing that I noticed since is that no one has ever come up with a good answer. So the reason I tell you that story is the quest

for connection was always there in me, is still there in me. Connection is what I'm driven by. And I was lucky enough to notice it when I was sub six. And so I'm quite a simple animal, I think. I think I can hold one idea. So here's my answer to your question. Figuring out what your idea is, what your original setting, what your factory setting is, is probably a good place original setting, to honor it and try not to betray it and enjoy, enjoy the quest.

That's Tilda Swinton. Her new movie, The Room Next Door, will be in select theaters on December 20th and opens nationwide January 17th. This conversation was produced by Seth Kelly. It was edited by Annabel Bacon, mixing by Afim Shapiro. Original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano. Photography by Devin Yalkin. Our senior booker is Priya Matthew and Wyatt Orm is our producer. Our executive producer is Allison Benedict. Special thanks to Rory Walsh, Ronan Barelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Mattie Masiello, Jake Silverstein, Paula Schuman, and Sam Dolnick. If you like

what you're hearing, follow or subscribe to The Interview wherever you get your podcasts. To read or listen to any of our conversations, you can always go to nytimes.com slash the interview. And you can email us anytime at theinterview at nytimes.com. Next week, Lulu talks to travel expert Rick Steves about the joy of discovering new places and why he sometimes decides to keep those discoveries to himself. Occasionally, I find a place that cannot handle the crowds and I will not write it up. You know, it's just too fragile.

Occasionally I find a place that doesn't want the crowds. That's pretty rare, to be honest. And I don't write it up, because I don't want to send people to a place where they're not welcome. I'm David Marchese, and this is the Interview from the New York Times.