Helena Bonham Carter Biography

Name: Helena Bonham Carter

Born: 26 May 1966 (Age: 45)

Where: London, England

Height: 5' 3"

Awards: Nominated for 1 Oscar, 2 BAFTAs, 4 Golden Globes

Occupation : Actress, voice actress, singer

She may not be royalty but, born in Golders Green, north London, on May 26th, 1966, Helena does come from classy stock. Her great-grandfather was Lord Asquith, liberal Prime Minister between 1908 and 1916. Her grandmother was Violet Bonham Carter, a renowned politician, orator and member of the House Of Lords (an excellent female role model), while her grand-uncle was Anthony Asquith, legendary English director of such classics as Carrington VC and The Importance Of Being Earnest. Yet, despite this exceptionally English bloodline, Helena's corpuscles are a heady mix, her father, Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker by trade, having married Elena, predominantly French and Spanish - with a smattering of Jewish, Russian and Viennese for good measure.

Though typecast as aristocratic heroines in solemn period films in the early part of her career, London-born actress Helena Bonham Carter struggled to prove her range and break free of her corseted mold. She gained notoriety as the leading ingénue in a few Merchant-Ivory productions, including "A Room with a View" (1986) and "Howards End" (1992), and quickly developed into the quintessential Edwardian heroine. Wanting to avoid being pigeonholed, Bonham Carter began appearing in more mainstream work, hooking up with commercially viable, but artistically respected filmmakers like Tim Burton and Woody Allen. Far from a Victorian prude off-screen, Bonham Carter made headlines for her tumultuous personal life after being romantically linked with Kenneth Branagh, Rufus Sewell and Steve Martin. She finally settled down and became involved with Burton, whom she met while working on "Planet of the Apes" (2001), enjoying a relationship that helped ground her both personally and professionally. From there, she appeared in several of Burton's films, including "Big Fish" (2003), "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (2005) and "Sweeny Todd" (2007), while outside the Burton universe she played the mad witch Bellatrix in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (2007), a role she reprised in the final two installments of the popular film franchise. Whether performing in period dramas or special effects driven fantasy, Bonham Carter always elevated any project in which she appeared.