Newton is the daughter of Nyasha, a Zimbabwean health-care worker, and Nick Newton, an English laboratory technician and artist. Her birthplace is reported to be Zambia in biographies , but she herself has said that she was born in London, during a two week trip by her parents. The name "Thandiwe" means "beloved" in Ndebele, Zulu, Xhosa or Swazi and the name "Thandie" is pronounced TAN-dee. Newton Read more...

Newton made her film debut in Flirting (1991). This Australian movie was also a launch pad for a young Nicole Kidman, with whom she has remained friends. She gained international recognition opposite Nick Nolte in the Merchant-Ivory production of Jefferson in Paris as Sally Hemmings, which led to her being cast in Jonathan Demme's Beloved (1998), in which she played the title character and costarred Read more...

Newton married English writer and director Ol Parker in 1997. The couple have two daughters: Ripley, born in 2000, and Nico, born in 2004. Her daughters were named after the character Ripley in the Alien films and the cult singer of The Velvet Underground fame.

In 2006, she contributed a foreword to We Wish: Hopes and Dreams of Cornwall's Children, a book of children's writing published in Read more...