20 Brilliant Sci-Fi & Fantasy Films Where Actors Play Opposite Themselves

Luca Guadagnino remade Dario Argento’s vibrant cult hit Suspiria, and in the process introduced various risky aesthetic and narrative changes - including sapping much of the film’s famous colour out of it - that ultimately paid off.

Set in the late 1970s, the movie invites audiences into the all-female Markos Dance Academy in Berlin, by way of new recruit Susie Bannon (Dakota Johnson), who has left her Mennonite community in the States to join what turns out to be a coven of witches.

Leading those witches is dance teacher and lead choreographer Madame Blanc (Tilda Swinton), who, though involved in acts of sadism and cruelty, seems to tread the line between good and evil. And it’s a fairly straight role for Swinton, so if this is where her presence ended, we might have been disappointed. Yet, she also plays Dr. Josef Klemperer, an elderly, bereaved psychologist (and, yes, a man) who seeks to expose the coven and save the girls within.

But that’s not all, because in a surprising, secretive third role, Swinton shows up as Helena Markos, the institution's grotesque, mysterious, and decidedly evil matron. If we didn’t know they were all the same actor, we might never have guessed. Guadagnino and his costume and effects departments did a wondrous job of disguising the Klemperer and Markos Swintons in makeup, outfits, and prosthetics, and Swinton’s acting does the rest - even when she is literally talking to herself.