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Helena Bonham Carter was once known
for art films, including Merchant-Ivory's A Room With a View and Howard's
End, and Zeffirelli's spin on Hamlet. She has more recently taken less
artsy roles, playing the self-help addict in Fight Club with Edward Norton
and Brad Pitt, and as a chimp in Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes. Bonham
Carter may look like an ethereal English Rose, but she cusses, smokes,
arm-wrestles. She has suffered through depression, undergone
psychotherapy, and underwent a self-described "mid-life crisis" at 35. She
is now the happily unwed mother of a young son with Burton.
She was born the youngest child of an English banker and his thoroughly
mixed wife, who was half French, with a soupcon Jewish, Russian, Viennese,
and Spanish. Bonham Carter's grandmother was Lady Violet Bonham Carter, a
famous socialite, orator, and politician. Her great-grandfather was Prime
Minister Lord Herbert Henry Asquith. Her cousin is British stage actor
Crispin Bonham Carter. When Bonham Carter was five, her mother had a
nervous breakdown. When she was 13, her father suddenly went deaf in one
ear, then suffered a stroke during surgery and was paralyzed on one side
and confined to a wheelchair. As her older brothers were already in
college, only Helena remained at home to help with her father's care.
At thirteen she won a poetry contest and used the 25 pound prize to buy a
listing in a British casting guide. Her first job was as Juliet in a radio
ad for electronics, and she worked often in local theater as a teen. At
17, she played an Edwardian ghost in a British television movie called A
Pattern of Roses. As union rules allowed only one non-union member in be
cast, an unknown Hugh Grant, who was also not a union member at the time,
was bumped from the movie to make room for her. After several
corset-and-bustle film roles, Bonham Carter applied to attend Cambridge
University, but, fearing she would drop out at midterms to make another
film, she was turned down.
She played Don Johnson's junkie ex-fiancée in a few 1987 episodes of Miami
Vice in 1987, and played a stripper in Dancing Queen, another British TV
movie. In 1993 she won a Golden Globe for playing the widow of Lee Harvey
Oswald in an American TV movie, Fatal Deception.
In 1994, while filming Frankenstein with Kenneth Branagh that she had her
first highly publicized romance. While Branagh and his then-wife, Emma
Thompson, went through a difficult breakup, Bonham Carter provided succor
for Branaugh, an affair that lasted for five years. Bonham Carter
reportedly lived with her parents until she was 30, when she moved in with
Branagh. She was Oscar-nominated for her role as the scheming Kate Croy in
The Wings of the Dove, which included Bonham Carter nudity and a sex
scene. She lost the award to Helen Hunt, but accepted the loss with a
joke, saying, "I'd won for the first two syllables."
Her affair with Branaugh ended in 1999, and in 2001 Bonham Carter made
movies with two more of her real-life leading men. In Novocaine, she
played a patient who seduced her dentist (Steve Martin), into prescribing
drugs for her. In Planet of the Apes, she played a chimp who fell for Mark
Wahlberg, while Bonham Carter herself fell for the director, Burton. At
the time, he was engaged to Apes co-star Lisa Marie. Burton and Bonham
Carter have been together since, and both frequently appear in public
looking uncombed and unkempt. Rather than living together, he bought the
house next to hers and they broke a hole in the wall. Their son, Billy
Ray, was born in October of 2003. |
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Eleanor & Colette (2007) ....
Colette
Stand by Love (2008)
Sweeney Todd (2007) .... Mrs. Lovett
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) .... Bellatrix
Lestrange
Sixty Six (2006) .... Esther Rubens
Magnificent 7 (2005) (TV) .... Maggi
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) (VG) (voice)
.... Lady Tottington
Corpse Bride (2005) (voice) .... Corpse Bride
... aka Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (Singapore: English title) (USA:
complete title)
Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) (voice) ....
Lady Campanula Tottington
... aka Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (UK: poster
title)
Conversations with Other Women (2005) .... Woman
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) .... Mrs. Bucket
... aka Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: The IMAX Experience (USA:
IMAX version)
Big Fish (2003) .... Younger & Older Jenny/The Witch
Henry VIII (2003) (TV) .... Anne Boleyn
Live from Baghdad (2002) (TV) .... Ingrid Formanek
Till Human Voices Wake Us (2002) .... Ruby
The Heart of Me (2002) .... Dinah
Novocaine (2001) .... Susan Ivey
Planet of the Apes (2001) .... Ari
Football (2001) (as Helena Bonham-Carter) .... Mum
Carnivale (2000) (voice) .... Milly
... aka Carnivale (France)
The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything (1999) (TV) ....
Lily
Women Talking Dirty (1999) .... Cora
Fight Club (1999) .... Marla Singer
... aka Fight Club (Germany)
The Theory of Flight (1998) .... Jane Hatchard
The Revengers' Comedies (1998) .... Karen Knightly
... aka Amour, vengeance et trahison (France)
... aka Sweet Revenge (USA: cable TV title)
Merlin (1998/II) (TV) .... Morgan Le Fey
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1997) .... Rosemary
... aka A Merry War (New Zealand: English title) (USA)
... aka Comstock and Rosemary
The Wings of the Dove (1997) .... Kate Croy
The Petticoat Expeditions (1997) .... Narrator
Portraits chinois (1996) .... Ada
... aka Shadow Play
Twelfth Night: Or What You Will (1996) .... Olivia
... aka Twelfth Night
Margaret's Museum (1995) .... Margaret MacNeil
... aka Musée de Margaret, Le (Canada: French title: TV title)
Mighty Aphrodite (1995) .... Amanda
Frankenstein (1994) .... Elizabeth
... aka Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
"Absolutely Fabulous" .... Dream Saffron (1 episode, 1994)
... aka Ab Fab (Australia: short title)
- Hospital (1994) TV Episode .... Dream Saffron
A Dark Adapted Eye (1994) (TV) .... Faith Severn (adult)
Butter (1994) (TV)
Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald (1993) (TV) .... Marina
Oswald
... aka Marina's Story
Dancing Queen (1993) (TV) (as Helena Bonham-Carter) ....
Pandora/Julie
... aka Rik Mayall Presents Dancing Queen
Howards End (1992) .... Helen Schlegel
Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) .... Caroline Abbott
"Jackanory" .... Reader (1 episode, 1991)
- The Way to Sattin Shore (1991) TV Episode .... Reader
Hamlet (1990/I) .... Ophelia
Getting It Right (1989) .... Lady Minerva Munday
Francesco (1989) .... Chiara
... aka Franziskus (West Germany)
... aka St. Francis of Assisi
Arms and the Man (1989) (TV) .... Raina
Maschera, La (1988) .... Iris
... aka The Mask
The Vision (1988) (TV) .... Jo Marriner
A Hazard of Hearts (1987) (TV) .... Serena Staverley
Maurice (1987) (uncredited) .... Lady at Cricket Match
"Miami Vice" .... Theresa (2 episodes, 1987)
- Theresa (1987) TV Episode .... Theresa
- Savage (1987) TV Episode .... Theresa
Lady Jane (1986) .... Lady Jane Grey
A Room with a View (1985) (as Helena Bonham-Carter) .... In Florence
- Lucy Honeychurch, Miss Bartlett's cousin and charge
A Pattern of Roses (1983) (TV) .... Netty, The Past (introducing) |
