Helena Bonham Carter

Helena Bonham Carter 

26 May 1966

An English actress. She was educated at South Hampstead High School, and completed her A-levels at Westminster School. Bonham Carter was denied admission to King's College, Cambridge, not because of her academic performance, but because college officials were afraid that she would leave during the course to pursue her acting career. She made her acting debut in a television adaptation of K. M. Peyton's "A Pattern of Roses" before her debut film role as the titular character in "Lady Jane". 

A two-time Academy Award nominee for her performances as Kate Croy in "The Wings of the Dove" and as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in "The King's Speech", Bonham Carter's acting has been further recognised with seven Golden Globe nominations, an International Emmy Award for best actress, three Primetime Emmy Award nominations, a BAFTA Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year honours list for services to drama, and received the honour from the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 22 February 2012.

As actress

• A Pattern of Roses (1983)
• A Room with a View (1985)
• Lady Jane (1986)
• Maurice (1987)
• A Hazard of Hearts (1987)
• The Mask (1988)
• Six Minutes with Ludwig (1988)
• Francesco (1989)
• Getting It Right (1989)
• Hamlet (1990)
• The Early Life of Beatrix Potter (1990)
• Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991)
• Brown Bear's Wedding (1991)
• Howards End (1992)
• Dancing Queen (1993)
• Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994)
• Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald (1994)
• A Dark-Adapted Eye (1994)
• Butter (1994)
• Mighty Aphrodite (1995)
• Margaret's Museum (1995)
• Jeremy Hardy Gives Good Sex (1995)
• Twelfth Night: Or What You Will (1996)
• Portraits chinois (1996)
• The Petticoat Expeditions (1997)
• Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1997)
• The Wings of the Dove (1997)
• Sweet Revenge (1998)
• The Theory of Flight (1998)
• Fight Club (1999)
• Women Talking Dirty (1999)
• The Nearly Complete and Utter History of Everything (1999)
• Carnivale (2000)
• Planet of the Apes (2001)
• Novocaine (2001)
• Football (2001)
• The Heart of Me (2002)
• Live from Baghdad (2002)
• Till Human Voices Wake Us (2002)
• Big Fish (2003)
• Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
• Conversations with Other Women (2005)
• Magnificent 7 (2005)
• Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
• Corpse Bride (2005)
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
• Sixty Six (2006)
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007)
• Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)
• Terminator Salvation (2009)
• Enid (2009)
• The Gruffalo (2009)
• Alice in Wonderland (2010)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 (2010)
• The King's Speech (2010)
• Toast (2010)
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 (2011)
• The Gruffalo's Child (2011)
• Dark Shadows (2012)
• A Therapy (2012)
• Great Expectations (2012)
• Les Misérables (2012)
• The Lone Ranger (2013)
• Burton & Taylor (2013)
• The Young and Prodigious Spivet (2013)
• Turks & Caicos (2014)
• Salting the Battlefield (2014)
• Night Will Fall (2014)
• Cinderella (2015)
• Suffragette (2015)
• Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016)
• 55 Steps (2017)
• Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero (2018)
• Ocean's Eight (2018)

Quotations

* * *

You learn to rely on a few basic movements and use your voice to the greatest extent possible to convey your emotions. So there was a technical challenge there and a responsibility to create a character from behind the mask.

* * *

I have to struggle to change people's perceptions of me. I grew very frustrated with the perception that I'm this shy, retiring, inhibited aristocratic creature when I'm absolutely not like that at all. I think I'm much more outgoing and exuberant than my image.

* * *

I liked pretending to be other people: I could reinvent myself, reinvent my own reality.

* * *

All the ancient classic fairy tales have always been scary and dark.

* * *

I'm drawn to emotionally damaged characters because there is more to unlock.

* * *

Journalists are always calling my features Edwardian or Victorian, whatever that means. I am small, and people were smaller in those times. I'm pale and sickly-looking. I look fragile-like a doll. But sometimes I just wish I had less of a particular look, one that was more versatile.

* * *

People have lots of misconceptions about me. My mum, who is half French and half Spanish, gets outraged when I'm called quintessentially English. I owe my looks to my mum-which was 90 percent of getting my first job. And, some people would argue, 90 percent of my entire career.

* * *

It took me ages to grow into being a woman, into being happy with it.

* * *

If you're a queen, you're powerless, so I'd probably demote myself and go shopping.

* * *

I love changing what I look like because I always feel super strange whenever I do watch something that I'm in.

* * *

You become very angry and depressed that you keep getting offered only these exceedingly demure and repressed roles. They're so not me. That's why films like Fight Club were so important to me because I think I confounded certain stereotypes and limited perceptions of what I could do as an actress.

* * *

I also get fed up with the fact that casting agents and directors have this impression of me as being frail and petite. I find it very patronizing. I'm quite beefy and strong. I was a gymnast in school and I have lots of muscles.

* * *

I enjoy those small chats you have when people come up and talk to you about your work. It only involves a few seconds of effort to be nice to those people, and I am very grateful for the kind words that people have taken the trouble to express to me in person.

* * *

Mothers are the heart of any household. I try to spend as much time with my children as I possibly can while also fulfilling my professional duties. It is tricky, but I think I manage it.

* * *

I love witches and magic and dress-up and make-believe.

* * *

Famous people come up to me, but I don't know who they are because my sight is so bad. It's always at the pool of the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills when I don't have my lenses in and my glasses are in my room.

* * *

When I was young I had so many inferiority complexes. I had an inferiority complex because I didn't go to university. I had an inferiority complex because I didn't train. Then it gets tiring. And you do get bored of it.

* * *

I think smells, like sounds, can be so much immediately affecting.

* * *

With the number of people I ignore, I'm lucky I work at all in this town.

* * *