EIFF Patron Wins Oscar

Submitted by edg on Mon, 25 Feb '08 6.49am

Tilda Swinton, who was educated in Edinburgh and cut her acting teeth at the Traverse Theatre, won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress as a scheming corporate lawyer in the thriller Michael Clayton.

"I have an American agent who is the spitting image of this - really,
truly the same shaped head and, it has to be said, the buttocks," said Swinton of her Hollywood agent Brian Swardstrom in her acceptance speech at the Academy Award ceremony last night in Los Angeles.

"And I'm giving this to him because there's no way I would be in
America at all ever on a plane, if it wasn't for him."

The 47 year old actress and patron of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, went to school at Fettes College, Cambridge University and now lives in the North of Scotland.

In recent years, Swinton has earned international renown for her icy role as the White Witch in the Hollywood blockbuster The Chronicles of Narnia. However, ever since her days working on the films of Derek Jarman, she's always been involved with more experimental arthouse film projects of the independent world such as dark fifties drama Young Adam which was filmed on the Union Canal in Edinburgh.