Helena Bonham Carter (born May 26, 1966) is an Oscar-nominated English actress.
Bonham Carter was born in Golders Green, London, and was educated at the South Hampstead High School, a girls' independent school in Hampstead, London and later at Westminster School, a co-educational independent school near Parliament (Palace of Westminster).
Her father was Raymond Bonham Carter, who came from a famous British political family; she is the great-granddaughter of the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Herbert Henry Asquith, and members of her family are Life Peers. Her mother, Elena, a Roman Catholic, was a psychotherapist. Bonham Carter's maternal grandfather was Eduardo Propper de Callejón, a Spanish diplomat and former Minister-Counsellor at the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C.; her Jewish maternal grandmother, Hélène Fould-Springer (who converted to Catholicism at marriage), was a daughter of a French Jewish banker. Her maternal grandmother's sister was the French philanthropist Liliane de Rothschild (1916–2003), the wife of Baron Elie de Rothschild.
Bonham Carter has two brothers, Edward and Thomas. Her father, who became ill when she was 10, suffered a stroke during an operation to remove a benign brain tumour, and was subsequently confined to a wheelchair.
Bonham Carter's launch into the world of acting came in 1979, when she won a national writing contest and used the money won to pay for her entry into the actor's directory, "Spotlight."
She made her professional acting début at the age of 16, in a television commercial. She also had a part in a minor TV film A Pattern of Roses (1983).
Her first starring film role was in Lady Jane (1984, released 1986) which had mixed reviews. Her breakthrough performance was in the role of Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View (1985, released 1986) which was filmed after Lady Jane, but released first.
These 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.
However she eventually expanded her range, and now has a high profile for more recent films such as Fight Club, Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride and Big Fish, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
In August 2001, Bonham Carter was featured in Maxim magazine.
Bonham Carter will play Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which began filming in February 2006. She replaced Helen McCrory who left due to pregnancy. She recently completed shooting her scenes for the film and her next project will be the film adaptation of Sweeney Todd, which is slated for a late 2007 release. Bonham Carter was a member of the jury at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Controversially, they unanimously selected The Wind That Shakes the Barley as the best film.
Bonham Carter has been reluctant to discuss her private life, but some facts are generally known.
She was in a relationship with actor Kenneth Branagh (with whom she appeared in several films), from 1994 to the summer of 1999. She then briefly dated actors Rufus Sewell and Steve Martin. In October 2001, she began her current relationship with director Tim Burton, whom she met while filming Planet of the Apes. She has appeared in all of Burton's subsequent films, and the couple have a son, Billy-Ray Burton, born on October 4, 2003. They live in adjoined houses with a hallway that connects the two homes.
At one point she had to take out a court order against a man who had been stalking her, banning him from entering the large area around her home.
