In the drama One Day, the extraordinary story of the British broker Nicholas Winton, who saved 669 Jewish children even before the Nazis finally occupied Prague, she plays his mother Babette Winton. “Playing her was in my DNA because of my Jewish background. Both my grandparents helped many Jews get out of Nazi Europe,” said Helena Bonham Carter to the British Jewish News.
In 2021, she discovers that her Jewish maternal grandfather, Spanish diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejón, defied government orders and helped save thousands of French Jews during the Holocaust, and that her British paternal grandmother, Lady Violet Bonham Carter, also volunteered to help air traffic controller for many Jews from all over Europe to find refuge in Britain.
Leonardo DiCaprio: I’m downright obsessed with global warming. It’s time to act
Style
From classics and corsets
“So it overlapped a lot with my real history. When I was offered the role, I felt it was written in the stars. As Babette Winton, I am an important, determined woman who contacts the authorities to find out what documents need to be obtained to help the children escape from Prague. And I can also say that I am the mother of Sir Anthony Hopkins, who plays the older protagonist,” Bonham Carter added with a smile.
Today, there is perhaps no genre that the charismatic actress has not played in her eight dozen films and series. Thanks to her talent, she broke through at the age of nineteen as Lucy Honeychurch in the romantic Room with a View (1985), a year later in Lady Jane, and then one success followed another. Whether it was Hamlet (1990), The Family Mansion (1992), the horror Frankenstein (1994), Merlin (1998) or Henry VIII. (2003).
I wanted to shock
While she was mainly cast in historical dramas and Victorian noblewoman roles in her early films, she soon decided to resist these roles. In David Fincher’s gritty thriller Fight Club (1999), she went all out as the feisty, black-clad, drug-addicted Marla.
Photo: Warner Bros
With Johnny Depp in the horror film Sweeney Todd: The Devil’s Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
“I started with the classics, without any acting training. At that time, I really liked to act in period dramas, which brought me the highest award, but enough was enough. I didn’t want to be boxed in. I wanted to shock the audience,” she recalls in Yahoo! News Helena, who conquered America and Hollywood at the age of thirty-three precisely with her performance in the role of the tough Marla.
Looking beautiful on screen was boring. The fashion inspiration was playing mentally disturbed women
Soon came roles in horror and fantasy films by the distinctive American director Tim Burton, whether it was her Dead Bride or the lover of the evil barber from Fleet Street who bakes buns filled with human flesh, the witch in Big Fish (2003) or the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland (2010). Her Bellatrix Lestrange continued in the same vein in the Harry Potter films.
Helena Bonham Carter likes to shock people
Style
Fashion linked to roles
“I like to dress up, I adore make-up. Sometimes I probably overdo it, but that’s expected of me,” admits Helena Bonham Carter. “I have never been a slave to trends. Over the years I have managed to develop a recognizable personal style. I also know why. For years, filmmakers in historical films laced me in corsets. They did shape the figure, but you couldn’t breathe in them. That’s why I came up with something completely opposite for the civilian,” explains Helena, whose main style influences were the fashion of Vivienne Westwood and Marie Antoinette.
She told German website Tele 5: “The fashion was directly related to the roles. Looking beautiful on screen was boring. That’s why the fashion inspiration for me was playing weird and mentally disturbed women, something about their madness attracted me. Tim Burton completely understood this and let me not only play these unusual characters, but also dress them up.”
The origin does not deny
“I know that my acting repertoire is much wider, but historical films are probably destined for me when I returned to this genre in the historical series Koruna (2020). Fortunately, without the corset. However, I fully enjoyed haute couture here in the role of Princess Margaret’s troublemaker, similar characters are close to me.”
Helena Bonham Carter was born in London to Spanish psychotherapist Elena and banker Raymond Bonham Carter. She is the great-granddaughter of the former British Prime Minister, Earl Herbert Henry Asquith, and her uncle, the politician Mark Bonham Carter, was a close friend of Princess Margaret. She is also a cousin of Lord Glenconner, whose wife Lady Anne was a lady-in-waiting to the princess. He has two brothers, Edward and Thomas.
An eccentric partnership
Since meeting on Planet of the Apes in 2001, Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter have had one of Hollywood’s most eccentric partnerships, both professionally and romantically. They lived in London in two houses connected by a corridor.
Photo: Profimedia.cz
In the role of manipulative Marla Singer in the thriller Fight Club with Brad Pitt
“We didn’t think about marriage, it was enough that we were engaged. Plus, having first one child with him, then a second child out of wedlock, and living in his neighborhood felt very romantic,” she repeated again to Yahoo! News. They broke up in 2014. “The main thing is that the children came to terms with it. They’re grown now, Billy is 20 and Nelle is 16,” she added, adding that Tim is still a part of her life in ways that go beyond just co-parenting.
Since 2018, Helena has been living with art historian Ry Dag Holmboe, who is twenty-one years her junior. About their age difference a few years ago, she told The Times: “Everyone ages at a different rate. My friend is an old soul in a young body, what more could you ask for.’
News
Now, Helena Bonham Carter wows again with her portrayal of Noela Gordon in HBO’s new biographical miniseries Nolly (2023). It tells about the last years of the unknown British TV star in the soap opera Crossroads.
He recently announced to Deadline that he will star in the upcoming period drama The Offing. In it, he reunites with director Jessica Hobbs, with whom he previously collaborated on the aforementioned series Koruna. The Offing is an adaptation of Benjamin Myers’ novel about the uplifting relationship between a young teenage man and a bohemian recluse three times his age, played by Helena Bonham Carter.
You know that…
- She attended the most prestigious private schools, yet she did not have it easy in her youth. When she was five, her mother Elena had a nervous breakdown, only recovering after several years. At thirteen, her father became paralyzed after complications from brain surgery. After he returned from the hospital, she helped her mother take care of him.
- The drama One Life is based on the biography If It’s Not Impossible… The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton, written by his daughter Barbara Winton. Unfortunately, she died during the filming of the film.
- Her longtime boyfriend and godfather of her children is fellow actor Johnny Depp.
Actors enchanted tones. Russell Crowe, Johnny Depp, Kiefer Sutherland and other Hollywood stars have their musical projects
culture
