Tilda Swinton has said she has “never had any ambition as an artist”.

The actress told British Vogue she did not have any plans beyond having family and friends, dogs and to live by the sea in the Scottish Highlands.

“Well, I’ve never had any ambition as an artist,” she said.

Suspiria Premiere – 62nd BFI London Film Festival
(Matt Crossick/PA)

“That may sound crazy and transgressive, but it’s a fact.

“If you’d asked me when I was 10 or 20, I would have said my only ambitions were to live in a family, to have friends that made me laugh and laughed at my jokes, and to live in the Highlands of Scotland, by the sea with a lot of dogs and a kitchen garden. Seriously.”

Swinton added she has been “really blessed to be able to achieve them”.

“Everything else is a bonus. Everything else is just icing and candles and flowers alongside,” she told the magazine.

BAFTA Awards 2012 – Arrivals – London
(Dominic Lipinski/PA)

Swinton also discussed why she stopped writing after going to Cambridge University.

“I just became overwhelmed, I think,” she said.

“A few years ago, I re-met one of my tutors when I went back to Cambridge to open the film and media school – I was so envious because there were no courses in cinema when I was at Cambridge – and I told her this in hushed tones.

“She said, ‘Oh, this happens to lots of people. You just dry up the second you start academia’.”

– Read the full story in the February edition of British Vogue, available via digital download and newsstands now.