Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton Team Up in 'The Room Next Door' (2024)

The only surprising thing about Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton playing lifelong friends is that it didn’t happen earlier. Both turn 64 this fall and have children around the same age. Both broke through in the fertile indie movie scene of the 1980s and ’90s and have gone on to work prolifically ever since, with some 150 films between them. They had crossed paths through the years, each a keen admirer of the other’s work. (Julianne’s favorite Tilda movie: The Eternal Daughter. Tilda’s favorite Julianne performance: The Big Lebowski.)

So when director Pedro Almodóvar asked Swinton who should be her costar in his new film The Room Next Door, she could think of only one name. Swinton would be Martha, a war correspondent with stage 3 cancer. The role of Ingrid, who must confront her fear of death to help her friend, called for someone who radiated decency, “a deeply sympathetic and relatable portal to a lived experience,” Swinton says. In short? “The Julianne Moore role.” Happily, Almodóvar had the same name in mind.

Despite being Oscar winners and Hollywood royalty, neither actress particularly identifies as a Woman in Hollywood. Moore lives a low-key life with her husband, director Bart Freundlich, in New York City. Swinton and her longtime partner, the artist Sandro Kopp, make their home in the Scottish Highlands (when we meet, she’s working on a 778-day Duolingo streak in Scottish Gaelic). Settling into a couch after their ELLE cover shoot and nibbling on a Romney’s Kendal Mint Cake, the pair’s easy rapport is evident. “The story of this film is these old, old friends,” Swinton says. “We could have been old friends, all these years. We’ve just made up for lost time. Now we’re old friends, even though we’ve only been together for a year.”

Does being part of a movie like The Room Next Door make you reflective?

Julianne Moore: A friend of mine died the other day. She’s our age and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. I said to Tilda, “I can’t believe this happened, we literally just made a movie about this.” So I think the movie is urgent and interesting and human, because this is it. This is what we face, and pretending that we’re not going to die is not going to do us any good. Martha says, “Yes, it’s hard, but I can take it.” It’s an important part about being a human being.

Tilda Swinton: The subject really is power. The feeling of powerlessness that we have to engage with around mortality, or, by the way, around aging. We have to get with the program: We are powerless. And that in and of itself is a sort of taboo. It’s a particular taboo for men, because of so many toxic ways in which they are consistently brought up to believe that they have to be all powerful all the time. And if they’re not, then something has to be changed, usually by violence. But it’s also a real issue for women, because there’s this sort of strange blackmail around if you don’t feel powerful, you’re kind of letting the side down. But being powerless in the face of mortality or aging is grace. It’s life.

• Beauty Tip: For Moore’s makeup look, try Lancôme Teint Idole Ultra Wear Care & Glow Serum Concealer, Brow Define Pencil, and L’Absolu Lip Gloss.

Looking back, do you feel there’s a through line to your career thus far? What’s the theme of your story?

TS: My original drug that got me into filmmaking in the first place is to work collectively, to work in very close communication with filmmakers. And I started with Derek Jarman in 1985 and worked with him for nine years. And by the time he died in 1994 of AIDS, I was hooked, but it was tricky because I was hooked and then he left. But fortunately, there are other people who want to work in that way, from Sally Potter, who asked me to play and make Orlando with her, to [director] Susan Streitfeld and [producer] Mindy Affrime, who asked me to make Female Perversions with them. And then I’ve gone on into very close familial bonds with Lynn Hershman Leeson, Wes Anderson, Bong Joon Ho, and Luca Guadagnino. I’m really grateful, because I don’t know that if I hadn’t continued to find these families, if I would be interested in working. I don’t think of myself as an industrial animal at all, you know, the way in which industry tends to divide people up and tends to concentrate on individual skills. My skill, if I have anything, is finding collaborators.

JM: I talk a lot about pleasure when I talk to people about my work. The thing that brings me back to it again and again, the thing that made me start doing it, was that it was really pleasurable for me, too. Sometimes with the arts, we’ll talk about how hard it is. “Oh my God, this part killed me. It’s so rough.” And I’m like, “Is it?” I don’t mean to say that the circumstances around any job can’t be challenging. But for me, the actual work of it, of acting, has always been about pleasure. And I really crave it and I crave the people that I do it with, and it brings me a lot of joy. I thought that I could be done with it at some point, and the surprise has been that I’m not. There’s always something to learn, people to learn from, things to explore.

When you interact with audiences, is there a particular movie that people connect with?

JM: There are the Lebowski people. There are the Still Alice people. There are The Hours people. There are the Boogie Nights people. There’s the Crazy, Stupid, Love people. I think because my work has been across many different genres, you never know what it will be when they say, “I just want to say I really loved….” And the other day, somebody said to me, “Evolution.” I was like, “Evolution? Oookay.”

TS: There’s one thing that I absolutely love, which is going through airports all around the planet, going through the X-ray machines, it’s always one film: Constantine. I don’t know if the security detail on the global airport syndicates play Constantine for people around the clock, but that is the film that they always talk about. Maybe it’s because I wear wings in that one.

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Has being part of the Marvel universe changed the number or nature of your fandom?

TS: I’m sure it changed the nature. There was a very beautiful moment once years ago when Sandro and I were making a film with Erick Zonca in Mexico City. We were doing a night shoot and all these street kids came up and flocked around me, because they’d seen the [first] Narnia film. And I thought, “How amazing. Where had they seen it?” Obviously, they’d stood in front of television shops and seen it through the window. And I remember Sandro saying, “Future Derek Jarman fan.” So that’s how I feel. Maybe Marvel fans will come and see an Almodóvar film.

Have there been women that have mentored you in Hollywood?

JM: When I was first on a soap opera [As the World Turns], there was an actress named Kathryn Hays who played the mother. And Kathryn, so lovely, so beautiful, had been on the soap opera and working in Hollywood a long time. I was brand- new on the show. I remember she would position my head in a certain way; if I did something so that the camera couldn’t see it, she would move my head. She was always very gently giving me advice or information, and I look back now and I’m like, “That’s a mentor.”

You’ve done so much. What are your goals for your career now?

JM: I just try to follow my interests, and in doing that I’ve been able to carve out the kind of career that I have. Goals are impossible to keep! I can’t control all of it.

TS: I’ve always intended that each film would be my final one. It was not wanting to jinx anything because I have had such fun from start to finish. I always thought, “Well, that’s a good one to go out on. Let’s just quit while we’re ahead.” And I feel it today. I feel The Room Next Door is the last film I make. Let’s see if anything else happens.

Tilda, you mentioned Sally Potter. Orlando was a landmark movie for many reasons, including having a woman as director at a time when it was rare.

TS: It was extraordinary what Sally Potter achieved. It’s very difficult to look back and really understand the truth of what I’m about to say, but we started talking about the film in 1988, I think. And we then had five years to develop it and to try and persuade anybody to give us any money at all. We had no profile, either of us. And we were talking about making a historical drama over four centuries with an almost unknown protagonist and no particular narrative. People were constantly asking us, “So what happens?” And we said, “Well, it’s about androgyny and immortality and poetry and becoming a writer and being internationalist.” And so it was an incredible feat of not just courage, but self-determination on her part to make it. It’s over 30 years old and it’s a classic, and there’s a whole other generation of kids who are now waking up to it. In those days, the idea of having all-gender bathrooms was unimaginable. It’s a very strange trip thinking about that.

We knew that flexibility and that inclusiveness and that diversity was the reality of life. It was just that society had to catch up with it. So there’s relief and a sense of vindication. I know so many kids who say that Orlando, hopefully the Ginny Woolf book but also the film, was the first inkling of the possibility of a flexible identity. And I’ve spoken to parents as well who say that it was the film that made them realize that they might not be the only people in this situation of having children of flexible identity. It’s a great privilege to have been able to put that out into the world. But as you know, we have to keep vigilant. We can’t be too clear that what we’re talking about is inclusivity for all—that means all. And if people find that difficult, then they need work.

There’s a moment right now, post-#MeToo, where women took some power, and there’s been an apparent backlash in our politics and our culture. Do you feel friction between men and women in Hollywood?

TS: Not in terms of the making of the work. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, it just means that I don’t necessarily put myself in positions to encounter it because of the ways in which I work and the people with whom I work. I suppose where I feel it is in the films I see that come out of Hollywood. It’s an issue. But, and this is a very optimistic thing I say, the first step is for women to know that they don’t have to ask permission of anyone to live fully realized and fully expressive artistic lives. That waiting around for permission is just not useful to anybody, because it doesn’t serve men either. And it certainly doesn’t serve boys or girls.

My friend and colleague Mark Cousins and I made a documentary series a few years ago, Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema. It was entirely made out of footage from films that have been directed by women over more than 100 years. Yes, China. Yes, Iran. Yes, France. But also, even Hollywood. It’s not the essential truth, this thing about women not having agency. The essential truth is that women were very, very significant in the pioneering days of Hollywood, as producers, as directors, as screenwriters, and, of course, as performers. There is a sense that progress is predicated on a need for fight, and aggression is not helpful because not everybody wants to fight. What we set out to do with Women Make Film is to remind women: It’s always been, we’ve got it, it’s covered. Take it up. It’s yours. It’s yours already. You don’t have to make the case. The case was made.

JM: Everybody talks about this in terms of what’s going on with pay equity and gender roles in Hollywood, but this is not endemic to Hollywood. We’re talking about global issues, huge cultural issues. Anytime you’re in a room full of women, you’re going to find that most of them are not being paid the same amount that the men are being paid, that they’re not employed to the same degree that the men are being employed, or that they feel they carry the majority of the responsibility. Women only received the right to vote in the last century—in the last century!—so this is a huge issue. You have to fight for equity in every industry. Those of us inside this industry might think [equity in entertainment] is important, but believe me, the rest of the world does not. So, it’s like we have an outsize sense of importance.

Lead Image: From left, on Julianne Moore: Sweater, skirt, Prada. On Tilda Swinton: Coat, sweater, Prada.

For Moore: Hair by Orlando Pita at Home Agency; makeup by Hung Vanngo at the Wall Group; manicure by Pattie Yankee. For Swinton: Hair by Orlando Pita at Home Agency; makeup by Dick Page at Bryant Artists; manicure by Alicia Torello for Chanel. For both: Set design by Gerard Santos at Lalaland Artists; produced by Hen’s Tooth Production.

A version of this story appears in the December 2024/January 2025 issue of ELLE.

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