Mark Kermode on… Kathryn Bigelow, a stylish ruffler of feathers

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From vampire noir to Bin Laden, Point Break to Detroit, the first woman to win an Oscar for best director has never pulled her punches Watching new Jeff Nichols release The Bikeriders , starring Austin Butler and Tom Hardy as 60s Chicago greasers, I was reminded of two other movies: László Benedek’s 1953 Marlon Brando vehicle The Wild One , explicitly cited as an inspiration, and The Loveless , the 1981 feature debut of Kathryn Bigelow , the American film-maker (b.1951) who would go on to become the first woman to win a best director Oscar with her 2008 war drama The Hurt Locker . A symphony of leather-clad posing (with just a touch of Kenneth Anger ), The Loveless was a staple of the late-night circuit in the 80s, often on a double bill with David Lynch’s Eraserhead . Sharing directing credits with Monty Montgomery, Bigelow playfully deconstructed masculinity and machismo in a manner that was one part wry to two parts relish. I remember seeing The Loveless at the Phoenix in East
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‘I am all for strangeness’: Tilda Swinton on artistic integrity, acting and the afterlife

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The Oscar-winning Scottish actor answers questions from Observer readers and famous fans including Pedro Almodóvar, Wes Anderson and Elton John

Tilda Swinton has been posing in different costumes for the Observer’s photographer and, as I arrive, has just changed into tartan trousers, saucy two-tone shoes and is standing perfectly still as a hairdresser attends to a blond quiff that makes her look like an incredible exotic bird – or a dandy hooligan, although her face looks too seraphic to mutate into aggro. What you see almost at once is that Swinton is giving 100% to the task at hand while being obligingly considerate to everyone around her. The mix of professionalism with warmth disarms, especially when you might have expected a superstar loftiness.

For Swinton is a superstar – ranked by the New York Times as one of the greatest actors of the 21st century. Original, distinctive and questing, she has played everything from a distraught mother in Lynne Ramsay’s We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011) to the ancient, querulous Madame D in Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and the White Witch in the Narnia series (2005-2010). She was in Almodóvar’s short The Human Voice (2020) and is about to star in his next full-length feature (details still under wraps). She is a chameleon yet always herself. She has won an Academy award, a Bafta, been nominated for three Golden Globes and, having just turned 63, is still seen as a fashion icon of androgynous beauty with an unchanging profile – like a figurehead on the prow of a ship. What a difference there must be, I’m thinking as I watch her in front of the camera, between her “real” life in the Scottish Highlands by the sea and all this London razzmatazz.

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