Helena Bonham Carter

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Biography

Helena Bonham Carter is Notable.

Helena Bonham Carter (born 26 May 1966) is an English actress. Bonham Carter made her film debut in the K. M. Peyton film, A Pattern of Roses, before appearing in her first leading role in Lady Jane. She is known for her portrayals of Lucy Honeychurch in the film A Room with a View, Marla Singer in the film Fight Club, Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter film series, her Oscar-nominated performance as Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove, her BAFTA-nominated performance as Enid Blyton in Enid, her portrayal of the Red Queen in the new Alice in Wonderland, her Golden Globe-nominated performance as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, as well as her other collaborations with Tim Burton, her domestic partner since 2001.

Helena Bonham Carter was born in Golders Green, London. Her mother, Elena (née Propper de Callejón), is a psychotherapist. Her father, Raymond Bonham Carter, was a merchant banker, and served as the alternative UK director representing the Bank of England at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s. He came from a famous British political family, being the son of English Liberal politician Sir Maurice Bonham Carter and renowned politician and orator Violet Bonham Carter, whose father was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, H. H. Asquith (serving 1908-1916). Helena Bonham Carter's maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón, was a Spanish Catholic whose father had been Jewish. Eduardo Propper de Callejón served as a diplomat and former Minister-Counsellor at the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C.

Helena Bonham Carter's Jewish maternal grandmother, Hélène Fould-Springer, was the daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer (a French-born banker) and Marie Cecile von Springer (whose father was the industrialist Baron Gustav Springer). Hélène Fould-Springer's sister was the French philanthropist Liliane de Rothschild (1916-2003), the wife of Baron Élie de Rothschild, of the prominent Rothschild family (who had also married within the von Springer family in the 19th century); her other sister, Therese Fould-Springer, was the mother of British writer David Pryce-Jones.

Bonham Carter has two brothers, Edward and Thomas, and is a distant cousin of fellow actor, Crispin Bonham-Carter, who played Mr. Bingley in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, and politician Jane Bonham Carter. Bonham Carter is also distantly related to Ian Fleming, author of the James Bond novels (through marriage), as well as pioneering English nurse Florence Nightingale, and is the grand-niece of Anthony Asquith, legendary English director of such classics as Carrington V.C. and The Importance of Being Earnest. Other distant relatives include Lothian Bonham Carter, who played first-class cricket for Hampshire, and his son, Admiral Sir Stuart Bonham Carter, who served in the Royal Navy in both World Wars and rose to the rank of Vice Admiral.

She was educated at the South Hampstead High School, an independent girls' school in Hampstead, London and later at Westminster School, a co-educational independent school near the Palace of Westminster. Bonham Carter was denied admission to King's College, Cambridge, not because of her grades or her test scores, but because school officials were afraid that she would leave mid-term to pursue her acting career. Because of Cambridge's rejection, Bonham Carter decided to concentrate fully on acting.

When Bonham Carter was just five, her mother had a serious nervous breakdown, from which it took her three years to recover. Upon her recovery, her experience in therapy led her to become a psychotherapist herself. Bonham Carter now pays her to read her scripts and deliver her opinion of the characters' psychological motivations. Five years after her mother's recovery, her father was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma. He suffered complications during an operation to remove the tumour which led to a stroke that left him half-paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. With her two older brothers at college, Bonham Carter was left to help her mother cope. She would later study her father's movements and mannerisms for her role in The Theory of Flight.

In 1994, Helena and Kenneth Branagh met while filming Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In 1999, after five years together, they separated.

In 2001, Helena began a relationship with American director Tim Burton, whom she met while filming Planet of the Apes. They separated in 2014. They had two children: son Billy Raymond Burton (born 4 October 2003) and daughter Nell Burton (born 15 December 2007).

Helena 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. She has received a Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award and two National Board of Review awards.

She was made a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (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.

Sources

• Darryl Lundy, The Peerage [1].
• Wikipedia contributors, "Helena Bonham Carter," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedi[2].