Actor Tilda Swinton has opened up about the profound losses she faced during the AIDS crisis, recalling she attended 43 funerals in a single year. Speaking on BBC’s Woman’s Hour, she said, “That was what our life was like then.” Referencing a new HIV prevention injection that aims to eliminate new HIV cases in the U.K. by 2030—she said, “It’s poignant for us who lived through that to know that it isn’t necessarily a death sentence like it was at a certain point.” Swinton, long a queer ally, credited her creative roots to her collaboration with gay filmmaker Derek Jarman, who died of AIDS-related illness in 1994.
