Tilda leaves us all spellbound

Tilda Swinton's face is as white as snow. The actress didn't want any make-up to play the cruel White Witch in the much-anticipated screen version of C. S. Lewis's classic fantasy The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, which has its world premiere in London on 7 December, where it has been picked as this year's Royal Film Performance.

Using her golden wand, and protected by her army of black-bearded dwarves, the White Witch has placed an icy spell over Narnia where it is always winter and never Christmas.

But as the millions of us who have read the book (and the six others in Lewis's Chronicles Of Narnia series) know, help is on the way, in the form of the Pevensie children - Peter, Edmund, Susan and Lucy - evacuated from the London air raids of World War II. The children are about to climb through that famous wardrobe and help topple the witch, with the help of Aslan the lion.

Ms Swinton said recently that her White Witch character is so scary that "children who see this will be backing away from me for the rest of my life".

Producer Mark Johnson, who worked on the film with director Andrew Adamson on locations in New Zealand, said that there's something "otherworldly" about the actress, which made her a perfect White Witch. "There's something almost not earthbound about her," Johnson told me.

Tilda's porcelain features and 5ft 11in height also served her well in winning the role. Lewis wrote that the White Witch, known as Jadis, has "giantish" blood in her, and Johnson pointed out that when Edmund first sees her, he's drawn by her pale beauty and overwhelmed by her height.

Young actors William Moseley, Skandar Keynes, Georgie Henley and Anna Popplewell play the Pevensie siblings, with James McAvoy as Mr Titmus, Ray Winstone and Dawn French providing the voices of Mr and Mrs Beaver, and Liam Neeson the voice of Aslan.

Initially, Brian Cox had been cast to provide Aslan's voice, but the film-makers changed their minds and hired Neeson instead. "Andrew and I realised that we'd made a mistake," Johnson admitted.

"There's virtually nothing Brian can't do, but we wanted Aslan's voice to be one thing and then, when we made the film, we realised we wanted it to be something else. It was just one of those things that happen in film making."