60 Facts About Helena Bonham Carter

Helena Bonham Carter was born on 26 May 1966 and is an English actress.

Bonham Carter rose to prominence by playing Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View and the title character in Lady Jane.

Helena Bonham Carter is best known for her eccentric fashion and dark aesthetic and for often playing quirky women.

Helena Bonham Carter's 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.

Helena Bonham Carter's mother, Elena, is a psychotherapist who is of Spanish and mostly Jewish background, and whose parents were diplomat Eduardo Propper de Callejon from Spain and painter Baroness Helene Fould-Springer.

Bonham Carter applied to King's College, Cambridge, but was rejected.

When Bonham Carter was five, her mother had a serious nervous breakdown, from which she needed three years to recover.

Bonham Carter has since paid her to read her scripts and deliver opinions on the characters' psychological motivations.

Helena Bonham Carter suffered complications during an operation to remove the tumour, which led to a stroke, leaving him half-paralysed and using a wheelchair.

Helena Bonham Carter later studied her father's movements and mannerisms for her role in The Theory of Flight.

Helena Bonham Carter made her professional acting debut at the age of 16 in a television commercial.

Helena Bonham Carter had a minor part in the 1983 TV film A Pattern of Roses.

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.

In 1994, Bonham Carter 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.

Helena Bonham Carter played her second Queen of England when she was cast as Anne Boleyn in the ITV1 miniseries Henry VIII; however, her role was restricted, as she was pregnant with her first child at the time of filming.

Helena 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, Bonham Carter launched her own fashion line, "The Pantaloonies", with swimwear designer Samantha Sage.

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.

Bonham Carter received positive reviews as Bellatrix, described as a "shining but underused talent".

Helena Bonham Carter played Mrs Lovett, Sweeney Todd's amorous accomplice, in the film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Burton.

Bonham Carter received a nomination for the Golden Globe for Best Actress for her performance.

Helena Bonham Carter won the Best Actress award in the 2007 Evening Standard British Film Awards for her performances in Sweeney Todd and Conversations With Other Women, along with another Best Actress award at the 2009 Empire Awards.

Bonham Carter appeared in the fourth Terminator film, entitled Terminator Salvation, playing a small but pivotal role as a personification of Skynet.

In 2009, Bonham Carter was the mother squirrel narrator in the 30-minute animated film adaptation of the best-selling children's book The Gruffalo, which was broadcast on BBC One on 25 December 2009.

Bonham Carter joined the cast of Tim Burton's 2010 film, Alice in Wonderland, as the Red Queen.

Helena Bonham Carter appears alongside Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway, Mia Wasikowska, Crispin Glover, and Harry Potter co-star Alan Rickman.

Helena Bonham Carter's role was an amalgamation of the Queen of Hearts and the Red Queen.

In early 2009, Bonham Carter was named one of The Timess top-10 British Actresses of all time, along with fellow actresses Judi Dench, Helen Mirren, Maggie Smith, Julie Andrews, and Audrey Hepburn.

In 2010, Bonham Carter played Queen Elizabeth in the film The King's Speech.

Helena Bonham Carter won her first BAFTA Award, but lost the Academy Award to Melissa Leo for The Fighter.

Bonham Carter signed to play author Enid Blyton in the BBC Four television biopic, Enid.

Helena Bonham Carter received her first Television BAFTA Nomination for Best Actress, for Enid.

Helena Bonham Carter received the Britannia Award for British Artist of the Year from BAFTA LA in 2011.

Helena Bonham Carter co-starred in a film adaptation of the musical Les Miserables, released in 2012.

Helena Bonham Carter's casting was announced alongside that of Kathy Bates, Kyle Catlett and Callum Keith Rennie, with Jean-Pierre Jeunet directing.

Helena Bonham Carter appeared in a short film directed by Roman Polanski for the clothing brand Prada.

Also that year, Bonham Carter narrated poetry for The Love Book App, an interactive anthology of love literature developed by Allie Byrne Esiri.

Helena Bonham Carter played the Fairy Godmother in the 2015 live-action re-imagining of Walt Disney's Cinderella.

In 2016, Bonham Carter reprised her role of the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass.

In 2020, Bonham Carter starred as Eudoria Holmes in the Netflix film Enola Holmes, which is based on the Sherlock Holmes adaptation, The Enola Holmes Mysteries.

In early October 2008, Bonham Carter became the first patron of the charity Action Duchenne, the national charity established to support parents and sufferers of Duchenne muscular dystrophy.

In 2016, Bonham Carter said she was keen on the UK remaining in the European Union in regard to the referendum on that issue.

Bonham Carter was appointed to the honorary position of the London Library's president, making her their first female president, in 2022.

Helena Bonham Carter has been a member of the London Library since 1986.

Thompson has said she has "no hard feelings" towards Bonham Carter, calling her affair with Branagh "blood under the bridge".

In 2001, Bonham Carter began a relationship with American director Tim Burton, whom she met while filming Planet of the Apes.

Helena Bonham Carter owned one of the houses; Burton later bought the other, and they connected the two.

Helena Bonham Carter told The Daily Telegraph of her struggles with infertility and the difficulties she had during her pregnancies.

Helena Bonham Carter said that before the conception of her daughter, she and Burton had been trying for a baby for two years and, although they conceived naturally, they were considering in vitro fertilisation.

Since 2018, Bonham Carter has been in a relationship with art historian Rye Dag Holmboe.

Bonham Carter is known for her unconventional and eccentric sense of fashion.

Helena Bonham Carter has cited Vivienne Westwood and Marie Antoinette as her main style influences.

In May 2021, Bonham Carter featured in a commercial for British furniture retailer Sofology, taking viewers through the quirks and stylistic flourishes of her home.

Bonham Carter is a distant cousin of actor Crispin Bonham-Carter.

Helena Bonham Carter's own father was a Bohemian Jew, and his wife, Helena's grandmother, was a Jewish convert to Catholicism.

Helena Bonham Carter later served as Minister-Counselor at the Spanish Embassy in Washington, DC.

Bonham Carter has been the recipient of a BAFTA Award, a Critics' Choice Movie Award, an International Emmy Award and three Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as receiving further nominations for two Academy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards and five Primetime Emmy Awards.

Helena Bonham Carter has received other prestigious awards such as a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award and two National Board of Review awards.

Bonham Carter was made a CBE in the 2012 New Year Honours list for services to drama, and Prime Minister David Cameron announced that she had been appointed to Britain's new national Holocaust Commission in January 2014.