Tilda Swinton thinks about death and says you should, too

Transcript:

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. My guest, Tilda Swinton, stars in a new, beautiful movie called “The Room Next Door.” She plays a war correspondent who has dodged death several times. Now she has cancer, for which she’s received harsh treatments, including in clinical trials. But the cancer progresses. She’s rejecting more treatment – refusing to continue suffering – and has decided it’s time to end her life. The film is about suffering and death and choice, but it’s a beautiful film because of the sometimes-poetic dialogue, the emotional depth, the relationship between the two main characters and the contrast between Swinton’s ghostly presence in the film and the vibrant color-saturated world around her, including the clothes, the walls, and the furniture and the woods.

It’s a form of beauty and contrast I’ve come to expect from the film’s writer and director, Pedro Almodovar. He’s Spanish, and this is his first English-language feature film. Tilda Swinton started off in the film avant-garde. She made several films with the director Derek Jarman, including her first film, “Caravaggio,” and never expected or maybe never even sought commercial success – but she got it anyway. Many filmgoers were introduced to her in the title role of the 1992 film “Orlando,” adapted from a 1928 Virginia Woolf novel, in which a young nobleman – a favorite of Queen Elizabeth’s – inexplicably wakes up as a woman.

Swinton won an Oscar for her performance in the popular 2007 legal thriller “Michael Clayton.” She’s been in several Wes Anderson films, the Joanna Hogg films “The Souvenir” and “The Eternal Daughter” and the Luca Guadagnino films “I Am Love,” “Suspiria” and “A Bigger Splash,” the Julio Torres film “Problemista” and the Coen Brothers’ “Hail, Caesar! ” and “Burn After Reading.” Swinton even has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Ancient One.

Her new film, “The Room Next Door,” is adapted from the 2020 novel “What Are You Going Through” by Sigrid Nunez. Swinton’s character, Martha, is planning to end her life. She doesn’t want to die in her Manhattan home, surrounded by things she loves. She thinks it will be easier to die in a house in the woods that has no personal connection. So she rents a beautiful home in the woods for one month, planning on dying before the month is up. She wants solitude, but she also wants a friend to accompany her. After several friends decline, she asks an old friend who Martha had lost touch with. The friend, Ingrid, played by Julianne Moore, is a novelist who has found out Martha is sick and has been visiting her. Ingrid’s latest novel draws on her own fear of death. Here’s Tilda Swinton as Martha, explaining the situation to Ingrid.

(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, “THE ROOM NEXT DOOR”)

TILDA SWINTON: (As Martha) I will not go out in mortifying anguish. I’ve gotten hold of a euthanasia pill. Don’t ask me how. On the dark web, you can find almost anything. I also have an abundance of opioids for the moments of pain. And don’t look at me like that. I’m not asking you to convince me otherwise.

JULIANNE MOORE: (As Ingrid) I don’t know what to say.

SWINTON: (As Martha) I’m hoping you’ll say yes.

MOORE: (As Ingrid) Yes to what?

SWINTON: (As Martha) To my asking you to help me.

MOORE: (As Ingrid) Help you what?

SWINTON: (As Martha) I’ve faced death several times, but I’ve always been accompanied. We reporters form a kind of mobile family. This is another war. I’m not afraid of it. But, like the other times I faced death, I don’t want to be alone, Ingrid. I’m asking you to be in the next room.

GROSS: Tilda Swinton, welcome to FRESH AIR. I love this movie. I love your performance in it. And I want to congratulate you for making something that is so moving, with such a great performance.

SWINTON: Thank you so much, Terry. It’s such a pleasure to be here, and Happy New Year to everybody.

GROSS: Yes, and Happy New Year to you. I know you had friends, including your close friend, Derek Jarman, who made the first films you were in, who died during the AIDS epidemic, and your parents died. Are there ways – I know you have a lot of people in your life who have died. Are there ways in which the screenplay and your character connect with you on a very personal level?

SWINTON: Absolutely. It’s an incredibly personal and resonant film for me. And when Pedro showed me the screenplay, it – I was so grateful to him, not only because it reflects so many conversations that he and I have had over the time that we’ve been friends, but also very much my experience of the last 15 years supporting and bearing witness to loved ones who have been dismounting, as I like to think of it. It’s a great opportunity to place that witness up on a big screen for people, and with a kind of clear-eyedness which I think is always emblematic of Almodovar’s work. He’s so determined, always, not to look away, and that’s absolutely what this film is about.

GROSS: So many of Almodovar’s movies are about death or pain or hospitalization, and they’re all so beautiful.

SWINTON: And also, about surviving things of all kinds – surviving…

GROSS: Yes.

SWINTON: …Torturous relationships with our parents or surviving, you know, a long absence from a loved lover. The – it’s always about overcoming and somehow, you know, scaring away the things that frighten us ourselves. And what they say – you know, embrace the tiger, return to the mountain – that’s very much his attitude to life. He is pretty fearless, I would say.

GROSS: So what was it like for you after having, you know, borne witness to and helped people who were close to you and were dying? What’s it like for you to be on the other side in this role, as the person who is dying and wants to terminate her life?

SWINTON: It was a profound blessing, Terry, because when he first sent me the script, I did have to double-check with him who he was asking me to play. And when he – because, as I say, I’ve been in what I call the Ingrid position so often in my life, and thankfully so. It is a great privilege to occupy that seat, but…

GROSS: And just in case people get the characters’ names confused, Ingrid is the person who’s helping your character. Your character is dying. She is…

SWINTON: Yes, Ingrid…

GROSS: She is accompanying you.

SWINTON: Ingrid is the witness. Ingrid is the name of the person who Julianne Moore plays. And when he told me that he wanted me to play Martha, I remember this sense of relief because it was the snow that I didn’t know, because it was going to be a new track. But it was a snow that I had wandered about for so long, having sat on the other side of the chasm, as I kind of think of it. And I’d heard so many loved ones and friends saying to me, it’s so much worse for you than me. I’m in the hot seat. I’m going down, but you’re having to bear this. And so to test that was a very interesting project. And it did bear out, I have to say. There is something – of course, I’m not suggesting that – and I’m not – you know, don’t want to be too grandiose about this. I mean, I – this was a drama that we were figuring out. It wasn’t actual experience, but it – I got a tiny bit closer to imagining myself in that position. And it’s not a fearful place to be, I don’t – I didn’t find.

GROSS: The friends and family whose deaths you witnessed and whose end of life you witnessed – were they fearful of death?

SWINTON: Some of them. And yet, with a couple of exceptions, that fear dissipated and was replaced with a – something really inspiring, which was the essential acceptance of the inevitable. I mean, this is the thing that this film is really about. You say with accuracy that it’s about suffering. And, of course, technically, it is about dying. But it’s really, more than anything, Terry, about living. It’s about someone who has made the decision to live right up to the wire, go on living and to – for that to be the banner that she’s carrying. And it’s about the interest of life and an interest in life and about someone who, by the way, sets her cap at investing her last months, her last weeks in the three things that I’ve always thought were the things that will always see us through – friendship, art and nature. And so it is so full of – packed with energy.

And you referenced the colors, which are always there in Pedro’s work. The colors also bring it energy – the way in which someone who is mortally ill is choosing the brightest and most beautiful jerseys she can find to go out in and end up in, you know, a kind of Mishima pose in the most beautiful yellow suit and bright red lipstick. There’s that feeling of an investment in energy, which I think is really, really profound and worth reflecting on. I think, you know, a life spent considering how we’re going to spend our end is not wasted time. You know, it’s a really important thing to think about. She says, I think I deserve a good death. I think she’s right. I think we all do.

GROSS: Your character is kind of ghostly in it. And, you know, you’re very pale because you’re dying, and it’s such a contrast to the world of saturated color that surrounds you. And I’m wondering, did you do anything to make yourself appear more ghostly?

SWINTON: We worked – I worked with my great friend and comrade, Morag Ross, who’s the first makeup artist I ever worked with. I worked with her with Derek Jarman. “Caravaggio” was the first film we both made. And we worked very closely together on creating this feeling that Martha is both here and not here all the time. And, of course, there’s a sort of graduation in her pallor. There’s a graduation in her presence. So I take care of the spiritual presence, if you like, and she was very attendant with the way in which Martha moves through the spaces, as you say, in a slightly removed, phantomlike way. But that’s what the film is doing.

If someone is – and I’ve been privileged to be alongside people who have planned to leave. They know that they’re going to go, and they’ve even set a date. And they are at that point in such an interesting state because they are half in, half out on a tightrope, which is so tangential and so delicate and actually really exquisite. And she’s there. She’s on that tightrope. So she isn’t fully present, and her body is definitely on the decline. It’s shutting down. And she talks about that very touchingly, I think – about how difficult and painful it is to feel your brain, which you’ve relied on – she has relied on all her life. She’s had a very, very sharp brain all her life. And to feel it failing her, shutting down and struggling with her cognizance is super, super painful for her. And it’s that, of course, that drives her further out into the ocean.

GROSS: I know you’ve had long COVID. I don’t know if you’re still experiencing any symptoms, but…

SWINTON: Happily not.

GROSS: Good, good.

SWINTON: But it took a while.

GROSS: But is it OK if I ask you about that period where you were…

SWINTON: Please do, yes.

GROSS: Right. So I would guess you’d be feeling physically diminished, fatigued and maybe cognitively not at your best, having read a lot about long COVID. I haven’t had it myself.

SWINTON: The physical aspect was really not the issue. I had COVID, as many people – I think I’ve had it four times now. But having – this fourth time that I had it, which was – oh, I’m very bad at dates, but it was 2021. I was going to say 1921 there.

GROSS: (Laughter).

SWINTON: Could – might as well be. I had it in the August. I had it. I’d been in Cannes and got it, I think, in some super spreader event – very happy event – and had this bad physical crash for a couple of weeks and then went on to work with Wes Anderson in Spain on “Asteroid City,” where he’d gifted me with several long, impenetrable monologues. And this was the thing. My mind didn’t work properly. I could not remember anything. And that was very frightening. I mean, it was clearly not natural. It was clearly a response to whatever had been in my system. And it was very sobering, and I did wonder if I was, you know, looking at early onset Alzheimer’s. And it was with me for, I would say, about eight months and just gradually, gradually lifted, or it was like wading through a marsh. It just got lighter and lighter. And I was able to track it, of course, because I was making three feature films during that time for which I had to learn dialogue. And the Wes Anderson project was definitely the worst. I could not remember anything. And then the next project, which was “Problemista,” Julio Torres’ film, was a…

GROSS: Oh, I love that film.

SWINTON: I love that film, too.

GROSS: He was on our show after he made it.

SWINTON: Oh, was he?

GROSS: Yeah.

SWINTON: Oh, how wonderful. Yeah, no, he’s a great friend, and what a fantastic person he is and a contribution to the planet. He’s a wonder. But that – for that project, I could tell that things were getting a little bit easier, but, yeah, that was still a stretch. And then – I now can’t remember – but a few months later, I made another project, and that was a little easier again. And I would say I’m pretty much back to speed, but it’s taken a – it’s taken its toll.

GROSS: Well, let me reintroduce you here. If you’re just joining us, my guest is Tilda Swinton. She stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film “The Room Next Door.” It opened in New York and LA and begins opening in theaters around the country on Friday. It will open even wider on the following Friday the 17th. We’ll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF GILAD HEKSELMAN TRIO’S “DO RE MI FA SOL”)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with Tilda Swinton. She stars in the New Pedro Almodovar film, “The Room Next Door.”

In the film, your character has decided to end her life with a pill she bought on the dark web. But the person who she’s asked – her friend who she’s asked to spend time with her has this terrible fear of death, and her latest novel is kind of about her fear of death. What are your thoughts about what happens after you die and what happens during that transition? Have you – you’ve witnessed a lot of death of your loved friends and family. So having seen that and having thought a lot about it and having portrayed it in this new movie, like, what are your thoughts, and have they changed over time?

SWINTON: They have. What a wonderful question, Terry. How lovely to chew this cud with you. I remember the very first Martha in my life, who was my friend Derek Jarman, who was…

GROSS: And by Martha, you mean somebody who…

SWINTON: Who is facing their end.

GROSS: Yeah.

SWINTON: My friend Derek Jarman was diagnosed with HIV in 1988, 1989 and was very – and died of AIDS in 1994. And when he discovered his diagnosis, he was at that time, really, remarkably open about it publicly, which was – if you can remember that time – anybody listening who can remember that time, and those who can’t, I can tell you – was really an extraordinary gesture because people were so frightened. People were being persecuted. People were losing their jobs. People were losing their homes. They were losing their insurance. There were talks about putting people who – with HIV virus on sort of leper colony islands offshore.

GROSS: They were losing their family.

SWINTON: They were losing. They would – families were disowning them. All sorts of things were happening. Not everybody, of course, but there were these torturous scenarios that came with the fear around this illness and the fear being born by ignorance, of course, as ever. And he was someone who was a public figure who stepped right into that zone, right into that light and brought light onto that fear and owned it and said, yes, I am HIV positive and had another five years of life and filmmaking, by the way, until he finally left the building in 1994.

And I was what I would call in the Ingrid position – in the position of the person who Julianne Moore plays in this film. I was young. I was, whatever, 27, and I was very frightened. I was ignorant. I hadn’t known – apart from my grandparents, I hadn’t been close to anybody who had died and knew nothing – hadn’t at that point reflected on death at all, particularly, and was very, very frightened. And he figured, for me, an attitude to mortality, which has informed my entire life since and definitely my portrayal of Martha. He just faced it down.

And I remember this one particular moment when we were in the hospital and he was being very pragmatic and saying to me, right now, Tilda, I want to talk about this. I want to – I’m going to leave this cottage to you, and I want this to happen, and I want you to do this with the paintings and – ’cause I was sort of an heir to him. And I felt myself crying. I felt these tears welling up. And he took one look at me and said, nope. Nope, can’t do this. Can’t do this. If you’re going to do that, can’t do it. Sorry. And I was so challenged by that because it felt very brusque. It felt very tough of him. But now I understand what he was doing.

He was basically saying to me, I need something from you. And if you are not clear to give it to me right now, can you just absent yourself, work your head out and come back and be that person for me that I need you to be, which I was able to do. I was able to understand the message – you know, go away, deal with my own feelings and then come back and learn how to be that person who Ingrid learns to be for Martha in our film. And what he needed and what Martha in our film needs, and what everybody that I’ve had the privilege to sit beside since has needed, is a witness – somebody who is just there, who doesn’t try and mess with the situation, who doesn’t try and mend it, who is somehow apprised of and reconciled to a kind of powerlessness. But for the person watching, it’s almost unbearable at times.

And that’s why I understand now why people have said to me in the past, it’s worse for you. Because we sit there. We can’t believe there’s nothing we can do to help. We’re hale and hearty, and we are able to do things in the world that this person who’s ailing can’t necessarily do. And yet we can’t help. It’s challenging to a degree. And that’s the grace that that person – the person in the Ingrid position, the bystander, the witness – needs to really kind of chow down the acceptance of that powerlessness.

GROSS: If you’re just joining us, my guest is Tilda Swinton, and she stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film “The Room Next Door.” It opened in New York and LA and begins opening in theaters this Friday and then opens more widely on the following Friday, the 17. We’ll be right back after a short break. I’m Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I’m Terry Gross. Let’s get back to my interview with Tilda Swinton. She stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film “The Room Next Door.” She plays a former war correspondent who has determined to end her suffering from cancer and its debilitating treatments by ending her life within a month with a pill she purchased on the dark web. She asks a friend, played by Julianne Moore, to be with her for that month and to sleep in the next bedroom.

Swinton is Scottish. She got her start as an actor in the avant-garde. Eventually, she made successful indie films like “Orlando,” in which she played a young man who one day inexplicably wakes up as a woman. The film was about gender and how perceptions of men and women have and have not changed over time. She won an Oscar for her performance in “Michael Clayton.” She’s been in films – several films – by Wes Anderson. She’s been in the Joanna Hogg films “The Souvenir” and “The Eternal Daughter,” the Luca Guadagnino films “I Am Love,” “Suspiria” and “A Bigger Splash,” the Julio Torres film “Problemista” and the Coen Brothers films “Hail, Caesar! ” and “Burn After Reading.” Swinton even has a place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the Ancient One.

Your parents died in the care of home hospice. You were there in Scotland, where you’re from. Were you and your parents able to talk about your lives together and your lives apart and reconcile any things that needed to be reconciled, and be open and honest with each other?

SWINTON: You know, interestingly enough, we didn’t talk about anything explicitly, but – and we didn’t need any kind of reconciliation, my parents and I. But we did have – and this is a truly extraordinary, what, treasure in my life. We did have these moments that – not moments, but these weeks together – in my father’s case, several years – of togetherness that I didn’t necessarily see coming when I was younger.

I never thought that I would be able to look after my mother as a child, as one of my own children, and bathe her and be her carer, as I was for the last eight weeks of her life. She was diagnosed with cancer, sort of Stage 4 cancer, very suddenly and was given weeks to live. She actually lived for four months, and I was able to look after her. I was working for the first two months, and I had to pop back and forth. But when I came back to see her, asked her if she wanted me to take her home from the hospital she was in, she said yes, and I took her home and looked after her myself. And to look after her in the way that I was able to was such an amazing thing. I never could have seen it in my stars. And we never talked about anything explicitly, but just that and her giving herself over to my care was such a beautiful gesture and so generous of her, because I treasure it now.

And then my father, who was always such a one-man dog – he was devoted to my mother and a little distant with his children, and I never thought I’d get a look in. And if my father had died first, I don’t think I would have known him half as well as I do now. But when my mother departed, he was so bereft and, for a couple of years, really, really struggling. And I was able to step in and look after him. And that’s beyond rubies, to have a completely transformed relationship to one’s parent, because they’re then in a clarified state. I wouldn’t say a weakened state. I don’t believe it is a weaker state. I think it’s just clearer. And he was free to be as tender and as vulnerable that – as he was, in a way that he just stopped fighting being as vulnerable as we all are, as scared little animals. He was able to be that, and that was such a beautiful thing to share in and support him in. So, yeah. But we never talked about any of it.

I mean, there was one moment my mom was – and this is one of the things, you know, in my inner monologue or, rather, dialogue with her. I want her to see this film so much, “The Room Next Door,” because I remember in her last weeks, she was so impatient. She was in – on morphine drivers in a hospital bed in the drawing room at home, surrounded by, you know, dogs and flowers and books and us and music, and my father at the end of the bed, reading The Telegraph. So she was very comfy and cozy, and it was pretty much the nicest place she could have been for those last weeks. But she was really impatient. Her mind was still as sharp as a tack.

And I remember one day, about a week before she died, her doctor coming, as she came pretty much every day – the local doctor, wonderful GP – and my mother saying, is there nothing we can do? And I remember my father kind of twitching the paper and not looking over the top of it. And I was doing my tapestry beside her. And the doctor said, well, I mean, yeah, it’s amazing. You’ve obviously got a very strong heart. Yeah, I don’t know why you’re still around. And my mother said, can’t we do something? And the doctor said, well, yeah. You were put on those statins because you had that stroke, and maybe we could take those off – warfarin, or whatever. And my mother said, oh, could we? And she was like a child at Christmas. She said, oh, do you think we could? That would be wonderful. Turned to me, said, wouldn’t that be wonderful?

That was a Martha moment. You know, if she’d been able to take a pill then, she would have. She was ready. She wanted to go. And she only had another week to go, and it was relatively graceful. She just sort of fell asleep and slept for several days and then, at the very last minute, opened her eyes and looked at me, and took a last breath and went. As very often happens, there’s a sort of slight rallying, which is a beautiful thing to witness.

GROSS: Well, it sounds like her end was a blessing – like, the way it ended.

SWINTON: Yeah, truly. Truly.

GROSS: For her and for you.

SWINTON: Truly. Truly. I’m very grateful for both of them, that they had really graceful departures.

GROSS: Yeah. Well, I need to reintroduce you again here. My guest is Tilda Swinton. She stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film “The Room Next Door.” It’s opened in New York and LA and begins opening in theaters around the country on Friday and opens more widely the following Friday. We’ll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF NONAME SONG “BALLOONS (FEAT. JAY ELECTRONICA AND ERYN ALLEN KANE”)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with Tilda Swinton. She stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film “The Room Next Door.”

You’re from a military family. Seems to me you went in the opposite direction in your artistic life. You got your start in the avant-garde. And the avant-garde, it breaks the rules. It’s unconventional. And in the military, there are rules that are strictly followed. And it’s hard to be – unless you’re thinking of, like, an unconventional, like, war strategy and you’re in a leadership position, it’s hard to be unconventional in the military. Do you feel like you went in an opposite direction?

SWINTON: It’s so funny, Terry, because the more and more I live, the more I think that I’m going right down the middle of the family tendency, actually.

GROSS: Really?

SWINTON: When I think of comradeship, when I think of, you know, the project, when I think of, you know, the kind of trench warfare of independent filmmaking, when I think of walkie-talkies, when I think of, you know, kind of packed lunches in dark fields. I have a brother who was a soldier for many years, and I – we’ve always compared notes, and I think we live very similar lives, in fact. And, you know, less perilous to make films, but – for sure. But you’re right. There is a chain of command that I know that soldiers live and die by that we don’t necessarily – certainly not – maybe in studio filmmaking more. Maybe that’s more the hard army. But yeah, in the world of filmmaking that I sprung out of, it’s a collective, and that’s not necessarily what an army is. Yeah.

I think in that sense, yes, I did branch out from the family trade. But having said that, you know, there is this very strange epiphany in my recent years that I was always told by my parents that I was a bit of a strange thing and that there were no artists in our family. But I’ve recently discovered – since they died, I may say – that our family tree is littered with artists. And yeah, I’m not, in fact, an apple falling that far from the tree at all.

GROSS: Something that’s similar and different is clothing. Like, in the military, you have a uniform, which is kind of a costume but it’s a uniform. Everybody has the uniform. And in movies, like, you’ve worn so many different kinds of costumes over the years. So do you feel like clothing – like your interest in clothing, was that influenced for – in the negative or positive by the uniforms of the military? And I don’t know even if you ever saw your father or any other of your relatives or even your brother in uniform and what that meant to you.

SWINTON: No, no, no. You are absolutely right. Singularly inspired and informed by the uniforms. In fact, I’m making a piece of work now about that very thing – how central my response to my father and my grandfather’s uniforms has been. I used to watch my parents getting dressed up to go out to grand parties, and my mother would wear some really nice silk dress and looked beautiful. But my father had all the glamour. He had, you know, the gold frogging and the medals and those black trousers with the scarlet stripe down the side. Scarlet.

I mean, it occurred to me the other day, here I am working with Pedro Almodovar, whose, you know, works in the scarlet. He is one of the great artists who work in scarlet. And scarlet has always really meant something as a child of a, you know, Scottish military family. Scarlet is an important thing for the British army. And, yeah, it’s hugely important. And I have always been truly, sincerely and seriously interested in clothes and what they do for us and to us.

I was one of four, but I have three brothers, no sisters. And I didn’t have many dresses. I wore a lot of hand-me-downs as the third child often does, and they were boys clothes. And you know, nothing’s different. I still wear boys clothes. They are, you know, usually, the most comfortable things to wear for me. But the fact that I can wear both – and I encourage everybody to wear both, by the way – which is why it’s so important for people to understand that clothes are just choices. And we can wear whatever we want and choose our identity every morning or every hour. That aspect of clothing has always been really important for me. I love it.

GROSS: I think you’ve just described your interest in androgynous style.

SWINTON: I don’t even know that it’s androgynous. I just feel that it’s about being boundaryless. And you described, you know, with certain accuracy that “Orlando,” the Virginia Woolf novel and the film that we made in 1992, was – is about gender. I would suggest it’s not only about gender. It’s sort of glancingly about gender, but it’s really more about boundarylessness about – it’s about classlessness. It’s about internationalism. It’s about someone who’s immortal, by the way. And that feeling of endless possibility, that’s something that really fuels my motor. And I’ve always had that sense that, you know, why limit yourself? Why say, yeah, I’m going to be this kind of woman. I’m going to dress only like this. I’m going to be this kind of man. I’m going to dress and behave only like this. It’s such a waste. You know, we don’t feel that when we’re children.

I think maybe I had a very light-filled childhood before I went to boarding school when I was 10. I think that during those first 10 years, I must have felt – and I’m only guessing at this, but I must have had a sort of bedrock of possibility. And I really loved it. And I would like to keep it going in my life. And I – we all knew it when we were little. You know, we could dress up as anything – a dog or a dinosaur or an old lady. Just get a stick and bend over. You know, there’s no great miracle to it. And we somehow – as we get older, we’re encouraged to lose that sense of possibility and stick to our guns. And then if we want to change, it’s some massive trauma to society. You know, the whole idea of transitioning being terribly, you know, much other people’s business, which, of course, it palpably is not. It is nobody’s business than the person whose life is being informed by it.

GROSS: You’ve described yourself as queer, but not in the LGBTQ spectrum. So when you use the word queer, what do you mean?

SWINTON: I was named queer by my queer colleagues when I lived amongst them when I first became an artist in the ’80s. We were all queer, meaning that we were living in a world that felt self-determining for us and felt very much at odds with what we call the straight world, the square world, which was not necessarily to do with, you know, heterosexuality or homosexuality. It was to do with an attitude of mind and an attitude of living. And so I was named. It’s not that I named myself particularly, but I was named as a queer fish. We were queer fish, and I’m proud to continue to be a queer fish. And I’ve been in very happy and loving relationships with men for the last whatever, 30 years, with my children’s beloved father John Byrne, who died last year and…

GROSS: Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know that.

SWINTON: Yes. He’s one of my Marthas, my teachers. Yeah, he’s – he went last year. But he and I had these miraculous children. And then I’ve been with Sandro for 20 years, and we’re very happy, but we’re all queer (laughter). We’re all queer fish.

GROSS: I know in boarding school, you were bullied. What were you bullied for? Do you know?

SWINTON: Being queer. Being odd. Being quiet, being shy, being from Scotland. This was a very, reductive English girls private boarding school. And, of course, the terrible things, which we now know, if we are sentient adults is that if you take a bunch of children – and we were children. I was 10. I was the youngest. They were mostly 11. But if you take a bunch of children from 11 to 17 and you take them away from their families, you know, there’s a lot of grief there. And so they act out. Some of them act out by bullying others. And some of them act out by just being quiet, which I did. I was just incredibly quiet sitting in the corner.

The wonderful thing is, there was somebody else sitting in the corner, and that was Joanna Hogg. And she and I met on the first day of school. I was 10. She was 11. And she and I have been friends ever since and have become very close collaborators now. She’s a great filmmaker. And she was the first filmmaker I worked with – on her student film in 1986. And we made the souvenir films together with my own daughter. And then the eternal daughter that I was talking about earlier, where I play both the mother and the daughter. So that was one blessing in the heart of that experience, and that was Joanna.

GROSS: You won an Oscar for your performance in “Michael Clayton,” which is a very good, very popular, and also a genre film. I mean, it’s a legal thriller. And it was probably pretty conventional by your standards, considering the films that you made. I’m wondering what it was like to be in a film like that, that was more of a Hollywood film.

SWINTON: Oh, it was an absolute, like, coup de foudre when I read that script, because it spoke to my great passion for classic Hollywood. You know, it felt like I was reading a Billy Wilder script or a Joseph Mankiewicz script. I mean, it felt so pure and beautifully wrought. I mean, Tony Gilroy is a master. I mean, he’s up there. He’s up there with those great screenwriters. He’s – you know, Preston Sturges. I mean, he – it felt like gold. And so it is. It continues to be a golden, classic Hollywood film.

GROSS: I’m going to take a break here because I need to reintroduce you. So my guest is Tilda Swinton. She stars on the new Pedro Almodovar film, “The Room Next Door.” It’s opened already in New York and LA and begins opening in theaters around the country on Friday and opens nationally the week after. We’ll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let’s get back to my interview with Tilda Swinton. She stars on the New Pedro Almodovar film “The Room Next Door.”

I want to get back to your new film, “The Room Next Door.” And one of the things about Pedro Almodovar’s movies is that the music is usually composed by Alberto Iglesias. And I always love the music in Almodovar’s movies. So I’d like to play the theme that we hear several times through the film and then ask you what it was like to see the film with that music and how it enhanced or changed what you thought the film was. OK, so here’s the music.

(SOUNDBITE OF ALBERTO IGLESIAS’ “OPENING TITLES”)

GROSS: So talk about seeing the movie with the music and what impact the music had on you.

SWINTON: Well, it’s one of the glorious things about working with Pedro Almodovar ’cause you know that Alberto Iglesias is going to be there with you. And we didn’t have the score before when we were shooting, but we knew we would. And so I did a certain amount of imagining, when we were shooting, what the music might be. But when I finally saw it, I was so moved. I mean, it is, as anybody listening to that can attest, incredibly moving.

And there’s something about the cello, which I find so sensitive to the film. It’s, like – I don’t know. I haven’t talked to Alberto about it specifically, but it feels like there’s this pulse of intrigue in that music. It’s like something’s going to happen. It’s like a secret in the middle of it. Like, what’s going to happen? And there’s the cello. It’s like a sort of bass note. It’s almost like saying to us, you know what? It’s going to be quite heavy. Just keep breathing. And then you’ve got the strings saying, it’s also going to be quite light. There’s going to be something to amuse you along the way, but we’re just going to get through it. It’s such beautiful and brilliant music. He’s an extraordinary composer. And the marriage of the two of them is, you know, unparalleled, I think, in current cinema.

I mean, it brings to the fore the ways in which Pedro is a poet. His film is poetry. When people talk about the language in the film – and I know that for some English-speaking audiences, it may seem there’s a moment when you start watching the film, and you go, OK, so people are speaking in a slightly formal way. This is no mumblecore. This is not vernacular in a sort of modern American idiom, even though we’re set in America. That is the way he writes. He writes in a sort of slightly poetic style. I always say he writes in high heels, and he does it even in Spanish. People don’t speak Spanish in the way that people speak Spanish in his Spanish films, and they don’t really speak English in the way that they speak English in his films.

And the – and I think one of the reasons he writes that way is because he knows that Alberto Iglesias is going to be there with the poetry of the music underneath and around. It’s like he’s dealing with these very clear gems, like he’s – and Alberto is making the setting for the piece of jewelry. But that means that Pedro can keep everything very clean and crisp and clear, and sometimes a little bit hard. But that’s because he knows he’s got this sort of amniotic fluid of Alberto Iglesias all around the edges. It’s so beautiful.

GROSS: I think the music also is – and I think I’m right about this. It’s like a very slow tango.

SWINTON: Yeah. Yeah. It is a tango. Exactly right, Terry. It is a tango. And you know what? It takes two to tango, and that’s what this film is about. It’s about a partnership. It’s about a fellowship, and particularly about friendship between women. One of the things that’s beautiful about the story is that these women were very close a very long time ago, and they’ve had a couple of decades off. They’ve, you know – Ingrid was living in Paris and Martha was a war correspondent, and they’d just lost touch. And then they come back together at this critical moment, and I think there’s something particularly beautiful about that.

And I’ve lived long enough to know that this is a thing that starts to happen at this point in your life. You start to meet people who you haven’t seen for a couple of decades, and that bond is so particular because you’re drawing on your bond from when you were in your 20s. It’s still there. It’s still fresh. But you don’t have to sweat the small stuff of, oh, and then you were married to so and so, and then you got divorced, and you had two children. Right, OK. And then you lived where? Oh, you lived in Yemen, or whatever. And you can then get on with the business of reigniting that original bond, and that’s what this film is about. It’s about that tango.

GROSS: Tilda Swinton, it’s just been great to talk with you. Thank you so much, and thank you for making this movie. I just really love your new movie.

SWINTON: Thank you, Terry, and for everything you do.

GROSS: Tilda Swinton stars in the new Pedro Almodovar film “The Room Next Door.” Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, on the day of Jimmy Carter’s funeral, we feature part two of our remembrance of Carter, with excerpts of the interviews we recorded over the years. He talked about his poems, his concerns about how intertwined politics and religion had become and a somber holiday season soon after 9/11. We’ll also hear an interview with Carter and his daughter, Amy, recorded when she was 25 years old. I hope you’ll join us. To keep up with what’s on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram – @nprfreshair.

(SOUNDBITE OF GONZALO RUBALCABA AND DONGFENG LIU’S “JASMINE FLOWER”)

GROSS: FRESH AIR’s executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I’m Terry Gross.

(SOUNDBITE OF GONZALO RUBALCABA AND DONGFENG LIU’S “JASMINE FLOWER”)