Tilda Swinton

Actor

Name at birth: Katherine Matilda Swinton

Tilda Swinton won an Academy Award as best supporting actress for her role as a jittery and ambitious corporate attorney in the 2007 film Michael Clayton. Redheaded and sinewy, even gaunt, Swinton had already made her reputation with two decades' worth of dynamic and eccentric performances in offbeat films, gaining special notice in the androgynous title role of Orlando (1992, based on the novel by Virginia Woolf). The daugher of a Scottish nobleman, Swinton earned a degree in English literature from Cambridge University (1983) and spent a year with the Royal Shakespeare Company before turning to film acting. Her other films include Friendship's Death (1987), Female Perversions (1996), Love Is the Devil (1998), Vanilla Sky (2001, with Tom Cruise) and Thumbsucker (2005). She was one of three actors nominated for Oscars in Michael Clayton, along with George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson.

Extra credit: Swinton has twin children (Honor and Xavier, born 1997) with her longtime companion, the painter and writer John Byrne... She was a classmate of Princess Diana at West Heath Girls' School in England... According to a 2003 story in The Guardian, "Her father, Major-General Sir John Swinton -- Lord Lieutenant of Berwickshire, former head of the Queen's Household Division, Order of the British Empire and all that -- can trace his lineage back 35 generations, to the 9th century."