ACTRESS Tilda Swinton has revealed she feared she was “carrying the spawn of the devil” while pregnant with twins.
In her latest movie, the Oscar-winning star plays a mother whose teenage son commits a high school massacre.
Swinton admitted that while pregnant with her twins Xavier and Honor, she worried about what they would become.
She told a London-based newspaper: “Everybody thinks for one moment when they’re pregnant that they’re actually carrying the spawn of the devil.
“Because you’re in freefall, so you have to wonder. It would be crazy not to.
“It’s everybody’s nightmare that, when they’re pregnant, they’re going to give birth to the devil. That when they bring up children, especially a boy, they’re going to give birth to this violence.”
She continued: “But I remember noticing, when I had my babies, how much I liked them, and not just loved them, but I was really into them. I knew I was going to be curious about them, and up for the mayhem ahead. But at the same time I remember noticing I was relieved this thing was present in me. And I hadn’t realised there might be a doubt. I thought it was going to be automatic – and something in me said, ‘No, you’re really lucky here.'”
Swinton has also claimed in the interview that she did not speak for five years as a child after being sent to a string of boarding schools.
She was sent away to school from the age of 10 but said she suffered unbearable loneliness and was homesick and bullied.
She said: “I don’t think I spoke for five years.”
Swinton went to three schools, including the sixth form at Fettes College, Edinburgh.
Excited
She said that after growing up as the only girl in her family, surrounded by boys, she was at first excited by boarding school.
“Because I was happy to be amongst girls, having been in a family with a bunch of boys, I was going, ‘OK, fine. So now I’m a girl,'” she said.
She said many girls, including the future Princess of Wales, her classmate at West Heath Girls’ School, London, were simply expected to wait for marriage.
“It was a holding bay,” said Swinton, who also attended Queen’s Gate School, London. “We managed to survive. Most of us.”
In We Need To Talk About Kevin, Swinton plays Eva Khatchadourian, a successful but lonely travel writer with her own publishing company.
Despite concerns that a child might affect her relationship with her husband Franklin, she gives birth in her late 30s to Kevin.
An emotionally distant youngster, Kevin eventually goes on to murder teachers and pupils at the age of just 15.
In the interview with a London-based newspaper, Swinton said her character was completely isolated.
“It’s indescribable. It’s unspeakable, what she’s going through,” she said.
“It’s not even loneliness. It’s purgatory, which is much worse.”
The 50-year-old actress is known for her own complicated family life.
While she lives in Nairn near John Byrne, the playwright behind hit-TV series Tutti Frutti, who the father of her children, she travels the world with her toyboy lover German-born artist Sandro Kopp.
The seemingly open relationship began in 2004 and takes place with Byrne’s blessing.
Swinton met Kopp, who is 17 years her junior, while filming the Chronicles of Narnia. Kopp played a centaur while Swinton starred as the film’s villain, the White Witch.
We Need To Talk About Kevin will be released October 21.
