Actress Tilda Swinton said she’s fed up with COVID protocols on set and won’t abide by them anymore.
The 62-year-old British actress made the comments during a keynote address at the SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas, on Monday.
“We’ve had different challenges in the last few years particularly, and some of them are lingering around people’s belief in sitting in big spaces,” Swinton began, per The Daily Mail.
“Look at you. I bet none of you are wearing masks, as well. I mean, who knew that was going to be possible?” she continued. “There was a time … I mean, in Texas, did people even wear masks? I have to ask … I don’t know, it’s a wide world and people do things differently all over.”
The Academy Award winner followed up by discussing masking protocols that will be in place on the set of her new movie and how she’s choosing to ignore them.
“I’m actually just about to start shooting a picture in Ireland, and I was told — full disclosure, and I’m sure this is being recorded and people in Ireland might hear it — to wear a mask at all times, and I’m not wearing a mask because I’m super healthy and I’ve had COVID so many times and I’m so full of antibodies and I have faith,” Swinton said.
The actress previously described her experience with having COVID, which left her in bed for three weeks and feeling the effects long after that.
“I was coughing like an old gentleman who smoked a pipe for 70 years, and had nasty vertigo. I got off relatively lightly, but the worst thing is how it affected my brain,” she told The Guardian during an interview in January 2022.
“I did two films that I had to learn a lot of text for. One was the Wes Anderson and he likes you to speak like a speeding train,” Swinton continued. “I’m normally quite quick at studying, and picking stuff up, but this was like chewing a really big piece of gum. I couldn’t remember my lines.”
Several other celebrities, including Fran Drescher and Woody Harrelson, have also recently voiced their disagreement with ongoing COVID protocols in Hollywood.
Drescher said in February that she doesn’t believe vaccine mandates are necessary. Harrelson called COVID protocol “nonsense” and said the Hollywood community needs to stop forcing vaccination.
“That’s not a free country,” the actor insisted.