Cathy Tyson is the daughter of a black barrister from Trinidad and a white English social worker mother. She dropped out of college at age 17 to pursue acting at Liverpool's Everyman's Theater. After a 1984 production of "The Blitz Show", she won admission to the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her film debut was as an elegant black prostitute in Mona Lisa.
Her theatre credits include leading roles for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Open Air Theatre in Regent's Park, Talawa and Theatr Clwyd. In 1998 she played an exotic Cleopatra in an acclaimed production of "Antony and Cleopatra" at the English Shakespeare Company.