Tilda Swinton Confirms She Has Never Been Afraid to Die

Photo: Sony Classics

At the official Venice Film Festival press conference for Pedro Almódovar’s The Room Next Door, Tilda Swinton confirmed what the world has long assumed: that she walks the earth unafraid of the eternal void that must greet every mortal some day.

“I personally am not frightened of death, and I never have been,” Swinton revealed. “Because of certain experiences in my life, I became aware early. I know it’s coming. I feel it coming. I see it coming.”

While one suspects this is a sentiment Swinton often utters out of the blue, in this case it was a reference to the movie. The Room Next Door follows two old friends, played by Swinton and Julianne Moore, who reunite when Swinton’s character is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and chooses to end her own life. “This film is a portrait of self-determination, somebody who takes her living and her dying into her own hands,” she said. “It’s about a triumph, I think.”

After four decades in Spanish-language cinema, the film marks Almódovar’s first English-language feature. When asked why, at “nearly 75 years old,” he was finally ready to work in English, the director was quick to interject: “Not yet!” (He will remain 74 for three more weeks.) Unlike his star, Almódovar recalled that the film had helped him process his own feelings around death. “I cannot understand that something that is alive has to die,” he said. “The way that I feel is that every day that’s passed is a day less that I have. And I wouldn’t like to just feel that it was a day more that I lived.”

Switching to Spanish, Almódovar delivered a passionate and wide-ranging polical speech, denouncing the Spanish opposition’s proposal to block immigrants from arriving into the country by boat, and calling on audiences to reject climate-change denial. He also spoke unambiguously about his film’s theme. “This movie is in favor of euthanasia,” he said, to a round of applause from the audience. “We have a law in Spain [legalizing] euthanasia. There should be the possibility to have euthanasia all over the world.”

Almódovar compared working in English to trying out a different genre, like sci-fi: something he’d always wanted to do, but needed “the right vehicle.” (Before The Room Next Door, he also made two English-language shorts, one of which starred Swinton.) He found it in the pages of Sigrid Nunez’s 2020 novel, What Are You Going Through? “They were New York women, and they belonged to the generation that I know, the mid-’80s. I know how to do ladies of that period,” he said, to chuckles. He confessed he thought he would have more problems on the film than he did. “The language thing was very awkward, but both of the actors understood exactly the tone I wanted for this story. More conventional, more austere. Emotional, but not melodramatic at all.”

If they were in his wavelength, that was because the first English-language Almódovar heroines had both been longtime fans. “As an American — and this is gonna sound embarrassing — I thought there was something about him that was innately Spanish,” Moore said. “What I didn’t realize was, it’s just Pedro. It’s all Pedro.” She remembered walking into his apartment for the first time. “All of the objects, all of the colors: I was like, Oh my God, it’s all here. There’s so much of him in every single thing he does.”

Swinton had first experienced Almódovar’s work in the ‘80s, when she was working with Derek Jarman in Britain’s New Queer Cinema movement. ”He was occupying a very similar space to us,” she said. “We all immediately went, ‘There’s a cousin in Madrid, and we are waving at you.’ He was the face of a huge cultural change.”

She recalled lobbying the director for a part in one of his films. “I had the nerve one day when we were in the same space to say, ‘Listen, I’ll learn Spanish for you. I’ll be mute. I don’t care.’ He just laughed very sweetly, and I thought, At least I said it.” To finally get the chance was a form of grace, she said. “He has continued to be the master that he always was.”

And yet his inner child remained alive and well, Swinton said, “He is seven and a half. Not 74.”