Tilda Swinton: Cuckoldress

Daily Mail
Tilda Swinton: Her toyboy, elderly lover and an intriguing menage a trois
By ALISON BOSHOFF -
Last updated at 00:39am on 13th February 2008

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Tilda Swinton stormed the Baftas with her paramour,29, at her side. So what happened when she took him home to stay with her partner,67, and their twins? Welcome to an intriguing menage a trois

There is something captivating and other-worldly about Tilda Swinton; her powder-white skin, as luminescent as a teenager's, her heavily lidded deep green eyes and that shock of incredible red hair.

Even if she were not dressed in an avant-garde gold Dior gown and carrying a Bafta statuette, as she was on Sunday night, there would be a reamister to stare.



Wanted: Tilda Swinton, 49, has her pick of men

Indeed, she is so extraordinary that at first you barely register whether there is a man on her arm, and if so who it is.

This week, a handsome German-born artist named Sandro Kopp - 29 to her 47 - was playing the role of consort.

Kopp met her while playing a Centaur on the Chronicles Of Narnia film three years ago. She was the star of the film, the White Witch.

There seems to have been a coup de foudre, and the pair were spotted together outside a gym in Los Angeles last year.

His status as her new man was cemented, then, by his first official red-carpet appearance at her side this week.

Handsome and softly spoken, he trailed behind her discreetly at the official after-party at the Grosvenor House Hotel, and the pair disappeared into the night in the early hours.

Friends say that they plan to attend the Oscars together next month, too.

But the question of who is playing a supporting role to Ms Swinton is not exactly clear cut.

For at home - a spectacular pile on the banks of the Moray Firth - is Swinton's long-term love John Byrne.

And yesterday he revealed that he is very much a part of Swinton's life still.

Indeed, he made it clear that he and Swinton still love each other, and that they continue to raise their ten-year-old twins Xavier and Honor together at their whitewashed home, which is in a secluded spot at the end of a tree-lined road.

This is extraordinary enough.

But there's more.

The twins, it emerges, were with Swinton and her lover at the Bafta's ceremony, and returned to the family home as a group - including Kopp - on Tuesday afternoon.

They were greeted at the door by Byrne, who helped them with their cases.

The unconventional mÈnage then retired inside.

Kopp, it seems, is staying over in Scotland for a few days, with the full blessing of Byrne, an eccentrically bewhiskered figure who, aged 67, could almost be cast in the role of grandman.

Who is - ahem! - occupying which bedroom is a rather tricky question which, for whatever reamister, Byrne prefers not to answer.

"I wouldn't encourage you to ask anything like that," he growled.

"It's nobody's business. It's our business. It's nobody in the world's business."

It's no wonder that heads turn in Nairn when they see Swinton, Byrne or, very occasionally, Kopp out shopping in the village.

The locals are kept busy trying to work out what on earth is going on behind the closed doors of the Swinton-Byrne residence.

The truth, according to associates of Swinton, is that she is very deeply in love - with both men.

And far from being a passing phase she is said to hope that it continues indefinitely. "All I can tell you," said a London associate of the actress, "is that Tilda is delightfully, extremely happy."

Sandro is her man when she travels - he is an artist and claims to have bases in New York, Paris, Germany, Rome and New Zealand.