Helena Bonham Carter (born 26 May 1966) is a British actress. She is known for her character roles as eccentric women in blockbusters and independent films, particularly period dramas. Bonham Carter rose to prominence by playing Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View (1985) and the title character in Lady Jane (1986). Her early period roles saw her typecast as a virginal "English rose", a label with which she was uncomfortable. Bonham Carter is recognized for her unconventional fashion choices and dark aesthetic. For her role as Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove (1997), Bonham Carter received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress, and for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth in The King's Speech (2010), she won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Bonham Carter's other films include Hamlet (1990), Howards End (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Fight Club (1999), Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005), the Harry Potter series as Bellatrix Lestrange (2007–2011), Terminator Salvation (2009), Great Expectations (2012) as Miss Havisham, Les Misérables (2012), Cinderella (2015), Ocean's 8 (2018), and Enola Holmes (2020). Her collaborations with director and ex-husband Tim Burton include Big Fish (2003), Corpse Bride (2005), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Alice in Wonderland (2010), and Dark Shadows (2012).
For her role as children's author Enid Blyton in the BBC Four biographical film Enid (2009), Bonham Carter won the 2010 International Emmy Award for Best Actress and was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress. Her other television films include Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald (1993), Live from Baghdad (2002), Toast (2010), and Burton & Taylor (2013). From 2019 to 2020, Bonham Carter portrayed Princess Margaret in seasons three and four of Netflix's The Crown, earning two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.
Early life
Bonham Carter was born in London. Her father, Raymond Bonham Carter, who came from a prominent British political family, was a merchant banker and served as the alternative British director representing the Bank of England at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, during the 1960s. Her mother, Elena (née Propper de Callejón), is a psychotherapist of Spanish and mostly Bohemian and French-Jewish background, and her parents were the diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón from Spain and the painter Baroness Hélène Fould-Springer. Bonham Carter's paternal grandmother was politician and feminist Violet Bonham Carter, daughter of H. H. Asquith, the prime minister of the United Kingdom during the first half of the First World War.
Bonham Carter has two older brothers, Edward and Thomas. They were brought up in Golders Green, and she was educated at South Hampstead High School and completed her A-levels at Westminster School. Bonham Carter applied to King's College, Cambridge, but was rejected "because officials were afraid that she would leave mid-term to pursue an acting career."
When Bonham Carter was five, her mother had a serious nervous breakdown, from which she needed three years to recover. Soon afterwards, her mother's experiences in therapy led her to become a psychotherapist herself. Bonham Carter has since paid her to read her scripts and deliver opinions on the characters' psychological motivations. Five years after her mother's recovery, her father was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma. He suffered complications during an operation to remove the tumour, which led to a stroke, leaving him half-paralysed and using a wheelchair. With her brothers at college, Bonham Carter was left to help her mother cope. Bonham Carter later studied her father's movements and mannerisms for her role in The Theory of Flight. He died in January 2004.
Career
Early work and breakthrough (1980s–1990s)
Bonham Carter, who has had no formal acting training, entered the field winning a national writing contest in 1979 and used the money to pay for her entry into the actors' Spotlight directory. Bonham Carter made her professional acting debut at age 16 in a television commercial. She also had a minor part in the 1983 TV film A Pattern of Roses. In the early 1990s, Bonham Carter studied clowning under master clown Philippe Gaulier at École Philippe Gaulier.
Bonham Carter's first lead film role was as Lady Jane Grey in Lady Jane (1986), which was given mixed reviews by critics. Her breakthrough role was as Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View (1985), an adaptation of E. M. Forster's 1908 novel, which was filmed after Lady Jane, but released two months earlier. Bonham Carter also appeared in episodes of Miami Vice as Don Johnson's love interest during the 1986–87 season, and then in 1987 with Dirk Bogarde in The Vision, Stewart Granger in A Hazard of Hearts, and John Gielgud in Getting It Right. Bonham Carter was originally cast for the role of Bess McNeill in Breaking the Waves, but backed out during production owing to "the character's painful psychic and physical exposure", according to Roger Ebert. The role went to Emily Watson, who was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance.
Bonham Carter's early films led to her being typecast as a "corset queen" and "English rose", playing pre- and early 20th century characters, particularly in Merchant Ivory films. Uncomfortable with this image, Bonham Carter states: "I looked, as someone said, like a bloated chipmunk". In 1994, she appeared in a dream sequence during the second series of the British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous, as Edina Monsoon's daughter Saffron, who was normally played by Julia Sawalha. Throughout the series, references were made to Saffron's resemblance to Bonham Carter.
Bonham Carter, who speaks French fluently, starred in a 1996 French film titled Portraits chinois. That same year, she played Olivia in Trevor Nunn's film version of Twelfth Night. A high point of Bonham Carter's early career, according to Alexander Ramos of Cinemablend, was her performance as the scheming Kate Croy in the 1997 film adaption of The Wings of the Dove, which was highly acclaimed internationally, and saw her receive her first Golden Globe, and Academy Award nominations for Best Lead Actress. Fight Club followed in 1999, where Bonham Carter played Marla Singer, a role for which she won the 2000 Empire Award for Best British Actress.
Worldwide recognition (2000s–present)
Bonham Carter landed her second role as Queen of England in 2003 when she was cast to play Anne Boleyn in the two part mini-series Henry VIII. In 2005, Bonham Carter voiced Lady Tottingham, a wealthy aristocratic spinster in the 2005 stop-motion animated comedy Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Starring alongside Ralph Fiennes and Peter Sallis, the film serves as part of the Wallace & Gromit series.
Bonham Carter was a member of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival jury that unanimously selected The Wind That Shakes the Barley as best film. In May 2006, she launched her own fashion line, "The Pantaloonies", with swimwear designer Samantha Sage. Their first collection, called Bloomin' Bloomers, is a Victorian style selection of camisoles, mob caps, and bloomers. The duo worked on Pantaloonies customised jeans, which Bonham Carter describes as "a kind of scrapbook on the bum".
Bonham Carter played the evil witch Bellatrix Lestrange in the final four Harry Potter films (2007–2011). While filming Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, she accidentally perforated the eardrum of Matthew Lewis (playing Neville Longbottom) when she stuck her wand into his ear canal. Bonham Carter received positive reviews as Bellatrix, described as a "shining but underused talent". She played Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney Todd's (Johnny Depp) amorous accomplice, in the film adaptation of Stephen…