Next up (apart from time with her husband and their two-year-old twins in their 'wilderness' farmhouse north of Inverness) is the recording of the voice-over for Patrick Keiller's Dwelling, followed by an update of Medea, set in Long Island in 1980, to be directed by John Maybury.

Further ahead are two projects with Berlin-based film-maker Cynthia Beatt, whose debut feature The Party Swinton also starred in.

The visit to the Berlinale gives Swinton a welcome chance to catch up with Beatt, who is about to launch the search for co-production finance for both projects. One of them is a dream project they first discussed in 1986, when they were both working on a film shoot in Fiji. Her enthusiastic description makes it sound like a very different take on some of the themes of The Beach.

"It's called Heart Of Light," she explained, "and it takes apart the European myth of the search for paradise. Our inspiration is a Robert Louis Stevenson story, and the character I'll play is kind of a modern version of Stevenson himself."

The other is called A House In Berlin. Swinton will play a woman living in Glasgow who is amazed to learn that she has inherited the eponymous house. She and Swinton are aiming to shoot it in the summer of 2001, largely in English.

Tony Rayns