Tilda Swinton has finally confirmed that she dressed up as an old man in elaborate hoax for upcoming horror film Suspiria.
The actor and director Luca Guadagnino have been denying that Swinton is playing the elderly, grieving psychoanalyst Dr Klemperer, instead attributing that role to a reclusive figure called Lutz Ebersdorf. Guadagnino even called the rumours ‘fake news’.
Talking to The New York Times, Swinton finally revealed the truth, confirming that she was in fact playing Lutz Ebersdorf playing Dr. Klemperer.
“The answer to the question to me, ‘Are you playing Dr. Klemperer in “Suspiria”?’ is always that Dr. Klemperer is played by Lutz Ebersdorf,” she said, explaining that despite all the press attention since the rumours first surfaced, no one had asked: “Are you playing Lutz Ebersdorf?”
Swinton even created a profile for Ebersdorf on film database IMDB.
“Undeniably, I would have to say, for the sheer sake of fun above all,” she confessed. “As my grandmother would have it — a motto to live and die by — ‘Dull Not To.’”
Suspiria is a remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror that follows a young dancer who discovers a coven of witches run an all-female dance academy in Berlin. This 2018 reimagining stars Swinton, Dakota Johnson, Chloë Grace Moretz and, well, Lutz Ebersdorf.
Swinton’s transformation into the elderly character took four hours in the make-up chair with Oscar-winning artist Mark Coulier. He explained that on top of thickening her neck and jaw, she also wore a specific prosthetic.
“She did have us make a penis and balls,” he said. “She had this nice, weighty set of genitalia so that she could feel it dangling between her legs, and she managed to get it out on set on a couple of occasions.”
This week, Thom Yorke released ‘Volk’, a sinister instrumental taken from the Suspiria soundtrack. It is the third release from the Radiohead frontman’s 25 original compositions for the film.
He recently opened up on the on the challenge of creating a soundtrack that was a worthy successor to the legendary 1977 original.
“It was one of those moments in your life where you want to run away but you know you’ll regret it if you do. I watched the original film several times, and I loved it because it was of that time, an incredibly intense soundtrack”, he said at the Venice Film Festival.