Few actors are as eccentric off the screen as they are on (especially those who work with directors like Tim Burton), but Helena Bonham Carter is certainly one of them.
Her fashion and performance style has shaped her into one of the most recognisable and accomplished British actors of the era, on both the stage and screen.
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Helena Bonham Carter was born on May 26th, 1966, in the high-class district of Islington, London. The family was prominent on the British political scene; her great-grandfather was former prime minister Herbert Asquith, while her grandmother was Lady Violet Bonham Carter, a feminist politician and one of Winston Churchill’s closest friends.
For all her financial and social security, Bonham Carter’s childhood was not an easy one. Her mother suffered a serious nervous breakdown when Bonham Carter was only five years old, and it would take her three years to recover. Barely half a decade after, her father suffered from a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. By then, Bonham Carter’s older brothers had left for college, leaving her with the duty of supporting her mother through these difficult times.
She did this while maintaining top grades at high school, and pursuing her interest in acting with unbridled enthusiasm. At age 13, Bonham Carter won a national writing contest, and used the prize money to pay for her entry into the Spotlight casting directory. “I just went and got an agent because I thought I can create my own world – you can’t right your own life, but you can escape to a world where you can have control.”
She had no formal training, but her acting debut in a television commercial at age 16, and a minor role in TV film A Pattern of Rose proved it wasn’t necessary. Bonham Carter had caught the acting bug, and the passion she showed for the craft was clear to everyone who met her. Bonham Carter went on to complete her A-levels at Westminster School, the most prestigious secondary school in the entire country, but was denied entry to King’s College, Cambridge, because officials feared she would quickly abandon her course to pursue a career in acting.
Bonham Carter’s first leading role came at the age of 20, when she starred as the titular character in romantic period drama Lady Jane. However, her breakthrough role would come two years later, when she played Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View.
Though she would display greater range in television roles, the film world was soon typecasting Bonham Carter as an ‘English rose’. “I should get a few ribs taken out, because I’ll be in a corset for the rest of my life,” she only half-joked.
Still, it was in these films – especially those produced by Merchant-Ivory – that Bonham Carter’s career flourished. She won her first BAFTA in 1992 for Howard’s End, and both a Golden Globe and Academy Award nomination for The Wings of the Dove in 1997.
“I hate this image of me as a prim Edwardian. I want to shock everyone.”
And shock she did, in 1999’s Fight Club. Her first major studio film, Fight Club highlighted Bonham Carter’s range and beloved eccentricities to a global audience. As the support group addict Marla Singer, Bonham Carter portrayed a grungy, imperfect, deeply messed up human character. “I’ve got a feeling it’s going to change things for me,” she said of the film.
It was a role in Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes that would truly change the path of her career. She began a romantic relationship with the director, who was soon casting Bonham Carter in the majority of his films – Big Fish, Corpse Bride (an animated character who looked eerily similar to her), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows.
Burton too had a distinctive reputation as being an oddball due to the tone of his films, and the relationship Bonham Carter shared with him for 14 years cemented the idea of her as an eccentric in the public eye. This was further emphasised by her practical, yet unconventional fashion style. She wore jackets over tutu-style tops, platform sandals, and vests that stood out boldly from her porcelain skin and frenzied hair. “I’m often criticised for what I wear. That’s my main label in the press now: disastrous dresser!” Still, her style – a refreshing alternative to the manicured glamour embodied by most celebrities – saw Vanity Fair name her one of the Best Dressed in 2010, and she was selected by Marc Jacobs to be the face of his 2011 advertising campaign.
She even launched her own fashion line in 2006. Called The Pantaloonies, the first collection featured Victorian style swimwear.
Outside of Burton’s films, Bonham Carter found success with major franchise films including Terminator Salvation and Harry Potter. She starred in Oscar winning film The King’s Speech, for which she won the BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role, and won an International Emmy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the TV movie Enid.
In the 90s she dabbled in theatre and radio, most recently in the adaptation of the classic play Private Lives.
2012 saw Bonham Carter made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for her services to drama, and she was appointed to Britain’s new national Holocaust Commission in January of 2014.
“I was weird right from the start. It’s just that you can’t ever expect people to get you. And I do think that really did mess with my head, being well-known young, when you really don’t know who you are.”
Whatever the definition of weird, Helena Bonham Carter has certainly established herself as one of the most unique and successful actors of the modern era. She serves as a reminder that individualism and passion are more important than simply fitting a mould, and that’s certainly something worth celebrating.