Tilda Swinton Birth Chart: The Scorpio-Neptune Stellium Behind Her Shapeshifter Range
Ralph Fiennes floated Tilda Swinton as HBO's next Voldemort. Her Scorpio Sun conjunct Neptune is the natal aspect that makes dark-magic casting feel inevitable.
Photo: Harald Krichel · CC BY-SA 4.0
By Sera Vane·April 19, 2026AI-assisted, editor-reviewed
Ralph Fiennes floated Tilda Swinton as HBO's next Voldemort earlier this month, and the internet's response was almost embarrassing in its speed. Of course. She's already played a Narnian ice queen, an androgynous time-traveling nobleman, a 3,000-year-old vampire, and an ancient Celtic sorcerer in Doctor Strange. Dark magic is, in some sense, her native register. What makes an actor this shape-shifting? You can point to training, or to the decades she spent working with Derek Jarman instead of chasing Hollywood. But there's something in her chart — a Scorpio stellium anchored by a rare Sun-Neptune contact — that maps so cleanly onto her filmography it almost reads like casting copy.
Not publicly verified — Rising sign and houses not claimed
Source
The Times birth announcement, 7 Nov 1960
The Scorpio-Neptune signature: why she dissolves into roles
Three planets clustered in Scorpio would already signal intensity. What sharpens Swinton's chart is that her Sun and Neptune sit within four degrees of each other — a stellium is a cluster of three or more planets in the same sign, and hers is tight enough to function as a single signature rather than three separate ones. A Sun-Neptune conjunction, where the sign of self and the planet of dissolved boundaries occupy the same degree of the zodiac, is the purest natal marker astrologers have for the shapeshifter. It describes a person whose sense of self is permeable — who can dissolve into a character the way watercolor dissolves into water.
You hear it in how she talks about acting. In interview after interview, she resists the word performance. She prefers shapeshifting, becoming, wearing. The ego that other actors protect, she seems happy to set aside. That's Neptune on the Sun doing what Neptune on the Sun tends to do: loosening the boundary between who you are and what you can embody. Scorpio then intensifies the whole picture. Neptune in Pisces produces dreaminess; Neptune in Scorpio — as it was for everyone born between 1956 and 1970 — produces something darker, more psychologically invasive. Paired with a Scorpio Sun, it's Neptune aimed at taboo, at transformation, at the things people don't usually look at directly. The White Witch, the vampire in Only Lovers Left Alive, the impossibly old Ancient One. These aren't accidents of casting. They're the stellium on the call sheet.
Why her craft stays so disciplined
If Sun-Neptune were the whole story, Swinton would probably be a more erratic, less rigorous artist — someone dissolved into every passing project without a throughline. Her chart has a counterweight. Her Sun at 13° Scorpio sits in a very tight sextile — the 60-degree supportive angle that lets two planets cooperate without friction — to Saturn at 13° Capricorn. The orb is under a degree, which astrologers treat as near-exact. When a contact is that tight, you can usually see it in a person's working life.
Sun-Saturn sextile is the signature of the craftsperson. It says: this person can sit with their own strangeness and turn it into work. No matter how avant-garde the project, Swinton's choices have the feel of a director — measured, structural, deliberately scaled. The Scorpio stellium is why she wants to go into the dark. The Saturn contact is why she comes back with something shaped. Saturn itself is in Capricorn, the sign it rules, which amplifies its weight. Dignified Saturn in supportive aspect to the Sun tends to produce long careers built slowly — no overnight stardom, but also no flameout. That matches her arc: the Jarman years, the art-film years, then the 2008 Oscar win, then the comic-book decade, then the prestige-television turn. She's been working for more than forty years without ever looking like she was rushing.
Mercury retrograde in Scorpio: the mind that goes under
Mercury is also in Scorpio and conjunct her Sun, and in her natal chart it's retrograde. Retrograde Mercury at birth isn't a bad omen — it simply describes a mind that processes inward first and speaks outward second. In Scorpio, that becomes a Mercury that digs. She's famous for how thoroughly she researches and inhabits roles; the classic Swinton preparation involves months of reading, archive work, and a kind of controlled disappearance. Her Mercury also forms a near-exact trine — the 120-degree flow angle between compatible elements — to Mars in Cancer, with an orb just under a degree. Mercury-Mars trine is articulate, pointed, and unafraid of confrontation. It's the language of someone who can make a press-tour answer land like a small poem. Watch any Swinton interview; she speaks in complete paragraphs. The Mercury-Mars trine is why.
The Mars-Saturn opposition: why she never went mainstream
One of the defining tensions in Swinton's chart is Mars in Cancer opposite Saturn in Capricorn. An opposition — planets 180 degrees apart, staring across the chart at each other — creates a permanent negotiation between two forces. In her case, between drive (Mars) and structure (Saturn), between feeling (Cancer) and ambition (Capricorn). In practice, this aspect reads as: she cannot do what the industry wants her to do. Every time Saturn tries to funnel her toward a conventional leading-lady career, Mars in Cancer pulls her back toward instinct, home, self-protection. It's the astrology of someone who'd rather live in the Scottish Highlands and pick strange European auteur projects than take the blockbuster. This is the same kind of refusal-to-be-typecast tension you can see in Ralph Fiennes's Capricorn chart, which is probably part of why the two understand each other's range so well. The opposition isn't a weakness in Swinton's chart. It's a filter. It's the reason her filmography looks like nobody else's.
Venus in Sagittarius: the unconventional aesthetic
Venus in Sagittarius describes Swinton's visual language without needing much commentary. Sagittarian Venus wants freedom, movement, the unusual, the foreign. It's why she and designer Haider Ackermann make sense as collaborators; why her red-carpet style reads like menswear-inflected sculpture rather than ball gowns; why her taste in directors skews international and auteur-led rather than domestic and commercial. It's also a notably loyal placement when directed well. Swinton has worked with Jim Jarmusch four times, Luca Guadagnino four times, Wes Anderson five times. Sagittarian Venus likes range, but when it commits, it stays. Compare it with the other great Scorpio Sun in this cluster, Goldie Hawn, whose Venus in Libra pulls her aesthetic toward warmth and romantic-comedy softness. Same Sun sign, almost opposite Venus tone. The Sun tells you the depth; the Venus tells you the surface.
The April 2026 transit: Jupiter on her natal Mars
The timing of the Voldemort conversation is worth looking at. As of late April 2026, transiting Jupiter is moving through Cancer at 17° — within a single degree of Swinton's natal Mars at 17° Cancer. Jupiter conjunct natal Mars is a classic amplification-of-action transit: new projects land, energy expands, the scale of what you're offered steps up. It repeats roughly every twelve years, and previous Jupiter-to-Mars contacts in her life have coincided with the Orlando breakthrough in 1992 and the Michael Clayton Oscar run across 2007 and 2008. Whether or not the HBO casting materializes — and the Scorpio-stellium pattern we've been tracking across 2026 makes her an uncannily good fit for villain casting — the astrology suggests this year is one where her scale of work shifts upward. Not by chance. On cycle.
What the chart tells us about Voldemort casting
HBO hasn't confirmed anything. Fiennes's remark, made in interviews promoting other projects, was speculative praise from one shape-shifter to another. But casting rumours tend to surface around people whose public image and inner signature already align — and Swinton's does, unusually precisely. Voldemort is a Scorpio archetype in all but name: obsessed with transformation, dissolved into his Horcruxes, defined by what he refuses to let die. Putting that figure into the hands of a Scorpio-Neptune actor isn't typecasting so much as acknowledgement. And the Potterverse already has form here; Daniel Radcliffe's Leo chart sits at the opposite end of the zodiac from Swinton's Scorpio, which may be why the franchise's next generation of casting feels like it's reaching for a different tonal register entirely. Whether HBO calls or not, the chart suggests she's already built for the part.
Is Tilda Swinton a Scorpio?
Yes. Tilda Swinton was born November 5, 1960, which places her Sun in Scorpio at 13 degrees. She also has Mercury retrograde and Neptune in Scorpio, giving her a three-planet Scorpio stellium. The occasional Aquarian label that circulates online is incorrect at the Sun-sign level.
What is Tilda Swinton's rising sign?
Her rising sign cannot be responsibly determined. Her birth time has never been publicly verified — the Rodden Rating for her birth data is B, meaning the date and location are sourced but the time is not. Any specific rising-sign claim you see circulating online is speculation rather than ephemeris-backed astrology.
Why is Tilda Swinton's chart associated with shape-shifting?
Her Sun sits within four degrees of Neptune, both in Scorpio. The Sun-Neptune conjunction is the natal aspect most commonly associated with chameleonic identity and the dissolution of self into character. Scorpio darkens and deepens that signature, tilting the shape-shifting toward transformation, taboo, and dark-magic archetypes rather than lighter disguise.
What is happening in Tilda Swinton's chart in April 2026?
Transiting Jupiter sits at 17 degrees Cancer, within a degree of her natal Mars at 17 degrees Cancer. Jupiter conjunct natal Mars is an expansion-of-action transit that amplifies scale and opportunity. Previous Jupiter-to-Mars contacts have coincided with her Orlando breakthrough in 1992 and her Michael Clayton Oscar run in 2007 and 2008.
Is Tilda Swinton actually being cast as Voldemort?
HBO has not confirmed the casting. The suggestion originated from Ralph Fiennes, the original on-screen Voldemort, in an interview in April 2026. The astrology of her chart makes her an unusually good archetypal fit for the role, but the industry status remains rumour rather than announcement at the time of publication.
