Tilly Norwood

How a Digital Actress Goes from First Sketch to Global Reaction

What happens when a screen performer is built rather than born?

Tilly Norwood examines the emergence of a digital actress launched into the public eye at a moment when artificial intelligence, screen culture and labour politics are colliding. Drawing on documented releases, industry reporting and critical analysis, the book traces Norwood’s development from early concept and technical pipeline to her public unveiling, media reception and the debate that followed.

Rather than celebrating or condemning the technology, this book asks precise questions: how such a performer is made, how audiences learn to read her, and what obligations arise when synthetic performance enters spaces traditionally occupied by human actors. Issues of authorship, consent, credit, labour and craft are treated with care, separating verifiable fact from speculation.

Written as a documentary record rather than a manifesto, Tilly Norwood situates one digital performer within the longer history of cinema’s technological shifts — from performance capture to CGI — and considers what may change quietly, through contracts and practice, rather than through spectacle.

This is a book for readers interested in film, media, artificial intelligence and contemporary culture, and for anyone curious about how new tools alter not only what we see on screen, but how the work behind it is understood and valued.