Tilda Swinton Donates Over $2K To Cover The Cost Of Gay Russian Activist’s Funeral

All-round perfect person Tilda Swinton has donated £1,247 to cover the funeral of Alexey Davydov, a prominent gay Russian activist who died last week at age 36 following a long illness.

Davydov died Friday in Moscow after slipping into a coma. Though the cause of his death remains unclear, Davydov’s legal aid, Pavel Chikov, told BuzzFeed that a police beating may have been a contributing factor:

During the month he spent in the hospital with multiple fractures, Davydov — who was also diabetic — learned that he had acute kidney failure and subsequently spent large amounts of time undergoing dialysis. Police, however, claimed that they did not break Davydov’s arm; neither they nor the Investigative Committee, Russia’s equivalent of the FBI, began proceedings to look into the beating.

Fellow activist, the controversial Nikolai Alekseev, said that Davydov made an “enormous contribution” to the Russian LGBT movement since 2006 and that he “dedicated all his life to activism.” Alekseev, however, refuted the BuzzFeed article, calling it the “worsening of American pederastia.”

Alekseev helped organize an online bid to cover the costs of Davydov’s funeral expenses and with Swinton’s donations they actually surpassed their goal. The Oscar-winning beauty had previously shown her support for the plight of LGBT Russians when she flew a rainbow flag in Moscow back in July.

Davydov was buried this morning in a cemetery outside Moscow.