Tilda Swinton has joked she was almost "sectioned" when she refused to have a caesarean birth.

The actress is mother to 14-year-old twins called Xavier and Honor. The children were born when they were three weeks overdue, with one weighing 6lbs. 7oz. and the other 8lbs. 10oz.

Tilda opted to wait to have the babies until they were ready to make an appearance naturally, a decision which she's hinted didn't go down well with medical staff.

"I was about to be sectioned under the Mental Health Act," she joked to Los Angeles Times. "There was an awful case two years before I had my babies of a woman who resisted having a caesarean and they sectioned her, chained her to a bed and forced her to have an epidural. I was a little nervous that was going to happen to me."

The 51-year-old actress finds the whole concept of motherhood interesting. She is continually amazed by people who expect women's whole personalities to dramatically alter once they start a family.

"It's interesting to me how one grows a new identity when one becomes a mother and how one is encouraged to believe that the part of oneself that existed before you had children has somehow magically died forever," she mused.