Tilda who?

That is the reaction heard most often when telling people you are going to interview one of the most well-respected actresses in the world, Tilda Swinton.

-You may know her as Rebecca Dearborn in “Vanilla Sky,” while more recently you may have seen her as Valerie Thomas in “Adaptation.” Next month, you’ll see her sitting next to Quentin Tarantino on the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

Swinton swung through Chicago with director David MacKenzie to promote their new film, “Young Adam,” co-starring Ewan McGregor.

Swinton sits in her flowing purple dress, with her bright blue eyes and wavy blonde hair accenting her pale skin. You’d never know she and MacKenzie had been working as “traveling salesmen” the past seven days, stopping in Washington, D.C., New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver to talk to the press.

“It’s really mad,” Swinton said. “We haven’t had any dinner that hasn’t been on a plane for 12 days. I quite like it, to be honest with you.”

“Young Adam” is about confronting guilt and attempting to live with it. Joe Taylor, a worker who lives on a barge with its owner, Les, and his wife, Ella (Swinton), discovers a body floating on the waterfront. Speculation about the death floods the barge, as well as the newspapers.

Meanwhile, Joe and Ella begin an erotic affair, which breaks up her marriage with Les. Later we learn Joe knows more about the dead body. The film then turns into a suspense thriller. An innocent man sits on trial, while the only man who can prove his innocence sits in the courtroom, struggling with admitting his knowledge to save the innocent man from death row.

“To feel the way in which the fiction writers and the judgement came in to create the idea of monolithic guilt, it’s really interesting,” Swinton said. “The way in which the juggernaut of fictioneering comes into play is really interesting to see.”

MacKenzie discovered this story after picking up the novel of the same name, which inspired him to write the screenplay.

“I read the book a long time ago,” MacKenzie said about discovering his first major project. “It’s a lost gem of Scottish literature. It’s very cinematic in the way it’s written, and it touches on lots on interesting areas.”

The Scotland in MacKenzie’s film (he and Swinton are both Scottish) reeks of American film noir. MacKenzie often references the works of Raymond Chandler (“The Big Sleep,” “Double Indemnity”) when discussing his film.

-“It reaches in this particular Scotland that, although it doesn’t really exist anymore, we all know the flavors of it,” MacKenzie said about the story.

The sad thing about the story of “Young Adam” is it has been mostly overlooked, as its NC-17 rating gets more attention. The film received such a rating for its erotic content; there is a scene involving McGregor’s bottom front half (what’s new?) and a moonlit scene in which his character performs oral sex on Swinton.

“When I first heard of the NC-17, I immediately downloaded three scenes into my head, even that rather boring issue with male genitalia for five milliseconds, but no, it was [the oral sex],” Swinton said.

“We tried to make a grown-up film for grown-ups,” MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie and Swinton were unaware of Blockbuster Video’s policy concerning NC-17 films in the United States. The kingpin video chain does not allow their stores to carry NC-17 films.

“That is interesting because I saw it at Blockbuster in the U.K. the other day [the film already is on video on Europe],” MacKenzie said. “Particularly with a film that is a serious film, based on a serious piece of literature, I think it’s not a standard they should keep. They should do it on a film-by-film basis.”

As the interview wrapped, MacKenzie put his last cigarette butt into the ashtray and turned to Swinton.

“I loved that phrase of monolithic guilt; I had never heard that before,” he said, smiling.

She smiled back at him. “I’ve just made it up.”

“Young Adam” opens Friday in Chicago, with a wider release pending on a later date.