from The Observer, January 6, 2008

by Barbara Ellen

She made her name in Merchant-Ivory’s exquisite corset dramas, but her Gothic beauty has since brought her a host of unexpected roles – not least in her partner Tim Burton’s latest gore-fest, Sweeney Todd. Helena Bonham Carter talks to Barbara Ellen about slasher movies, motherhood and why you won’t find a comb in their home

Helena Bonham Carter isn’t quite what you’d expect. All these years into her career (she is now 41, and made A Room with a View and Lady Jane when she was barely out of her teens), she still seems fixed to a large degree in the public imagination as the Merchant Ivory poster girl – the perfect English Rose forever wafting elegantly around, looking fragrant and distressed in bustles and corsets.

In truth, Bonham Carter’s career has been more complex and interesting than that, and so, it transpires, is the woman. While Bonham Carter does have the posh vowels (she is the great grand-daughter of former prime minister Herbert Asquith), she is also disarmingly friendly and has an earthy (if not filthy) giggle, which she employs a lot. In short, otherworldly and ethereal Helena Bonham Carter is not.

Then there are her looks. For someone so long hailed as the definitive ‘English rose’, it turns out that Bonham Carter is a proud ‘mongrel’, boasting a Czech/Spanish/Austrian Jewish/French/Russian heritage. In person, as on screen, Bonham Carter is hauntingly beautiful, with a childlike face, brown-rimmed eyes and that great bush of wild electrocuted-looking hair that makes her look as if she’s rushed straight from some Bronte-esque melodrama on the Yorkshire moors.

Then, of course, there is Bonham Carter’s ‘unique’ dress sense. (The press love to snap her looking like a pile of Gothic laundry.) Though today, when we meet in a cafe near her north london home, she is disappointingly restrained in a black jumper and ruffled skirt. ‘I don’t think I dress eccentrically,’ says Bonham Carter, placing my tape recorder on the arm of her chair so that her tiny, tumbling voice can register. ‘I’m just not conservative, I guess – I dress according to what like. And I’m not a mannequin, as you can tell.’

At the time of our talk, Bonham Carter is also pregnant by her partner, leftfield Hollywood director Tim Burton, with whom she’s worked on projects such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Big Fish and The Corpse Bride (since their relationship began, she has often been referred to as Burton’s ‘weirdo muse’).

Bonham Carter and Burton already have a son, Billy, four, and, shortly after we meet, she gives birth to a baby girl. At our meeting she is still pregnant, and how – her bump is so big she can barely sit up properly and keeps threatening to slide off the chair.

‘Yes,’ laughs Bonham Carter, ‘I am technically about to have a baby. I could technically go into labour right now.’

She tells me she was working so hard on Burton’s latest project, a film version of Sondheim’s musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, that she didn’t think she could get pregnant. When she did, she wasn’t popular with costume and continuity. ‘If you look at the film and see my breast size, it goes up and down like a yo-yo. I have my usual tangerines and I walk around the corner and suddenly they’re melons.’ Sliding down in her chair again, Bonham Carter erupts into giggles.

We’re here to discuss Bonham Carter’s playing the pie-making Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd, also starring Johnny Depp in the title role as the throat-slashing barber.

Recently nominated for a Golden Globe, Sweeney Todd is as gruesome, murky and twisted as they come (blood and guts oozing everywhere). Depp and Bonham Carter are impeccably sinister, and rather brilliant, dramatically and musically, right up to the climax, where, throats having been slit, they bleed to a grisly crimson death. ‘It’s not feel-good,’ says Bonham Carter, by way of understatement.

Bonham Carter loved playing Mrs Lovett, and refers to herself as a ‘musical whore’. ‘I’ve always loved musicals,’ she says. ‘Tim thought I was making Billy gay because that’s all I’d sing to him.’ She even claims that singing for Sweeney Todd may have got her pregnant. ‘It was all the oxygen. And my pelvic floor has never been so fit. I’ve got great hopes that after this baby it’s going to bounce straight back.’

Bonham Carter adds that, contrary to what people might think, she does not get parts in Burton’s movies simply because they are a couple. ‘I really do have to be righter than right before Tim lets me do a part,’ she says. ‘Sexual favours don’t get me anything.’ In the case of Sweeney Todd, Sondheim had the final say over casting, and Bonham Carter auditioned for him. She describes getting the part as ‘the most absolutely amazing thing. I just could not believe it. Nor could Tim, actually. He burst into tears. And I burst into tears.’

I ask Bonham Carter if being with on set with Burton is a bit like being the teacher’s kid – always mindful of charges of favouritism, they criticise and ignore you more. She nods: ‘It’s inverted favouritism. Or maybe just sadism. Whatever the opposite of favouritism is.’

I point out that Burton uses Depp again and again, and nobody criticises that. ‘Tim doesn’t sleep with Johnny though,’ drawls Bonham Carter, deadpan. ‘I can vouch for that. He only sleeps with me.’ Her lips twitch. ‘But he and Johnny have a perfectly cordial relationship.’

The way Bonham Carter tells it, things occasionally got rocky between her and Burton on the Sweeney Todd set. ‘There are certain stresses that come with working together,’ says Bonham Carter. ‘There’s no pretence with us, you see. No “Let’s adopt our formal selves”.’

What sort of thing is she talking about? ‘Well, he was all: (growls) “How difficult is it to come through the door and cover that spot!” And I’d be (whines): “I’ve got wool in my head because I’m fucking pregnant, and there’s blood everywhere and I didn’t see it, all right?” And all I get is: “Action!”‘

During all this, says Bonham Carter, people working with them on set would either look down or away (’Johnny was forever polishing his razors’). She grins: ‘One weekend, Tim and I came up with Indian nicknames for each other. I called him Big Chief Little Patience. His name for me was Little Squaw Running Mouth, ie I talk too much. Stay schtum!’

Sounds like being a muse, even a ‘weirdo’ one, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?

‘I don’t know if you could call me a muse,’ grins Bonham Carter. ‘Most muses are silent.’

Bonham Carter was born in Golders Green, north London, in 1966. Although ‘under-confident’, she was a clever child (’a bit of a swot’) and had a ‘fertile imagination’. She would watch the television wondering if she could climb inside it. Other times she would play around and dress up, watching movies and pretending she was in them. ‘I remember when The French Lieutenant’s Woman came out,’ says Bonham Carter. ‘I would pretend to be the French lieutenant’s woman. I was always a romantic. I still am, actually.’

Bonham Carter says she had a ‘very happy’ childhood. However, her father Raymond had a stroke when she was 13, leaving him paralysed in a wheelchair. The young Helena decided then and there to ‘reinvent herself’, picking up the phone to get an acting agent.

Was this her way of escaping reality? ‘It was an escape, I guess,’ says Bonham Carter. She credits her parents with giving her the inner strength to deal with the situation positively. ‘I was just determined to have self-sufficiency. It was just thinking: I don’t need to be defeated by this – it’s going to be OK.’

This fortitude is at odds with the fey, somewhat ethereal image people had of her in her youth. ‘I was not that,’ says Bonham Carter. ‘I never was. I was a very tough 13-year-old. And so determined. I just thought: I can make a happy ending out of this.’

Her father died in 2004, but it was he who encouraged Bonham Carter to grasp her first big break. A photograph that had been taken of her for Tatler resulted in film offers (not least to play Lady Jane Grey), but it meant she would not be able to go to Cambridge. ‘University would have been a kinder start,’ says Bonham Carter. ‘But I remember my dad saying: “You’ve got a break, and that’s something you can’t manufacture – you’ve got to go with it and see where it takes you.”‘ She smiles ruefully: ‘I suppose you can’t go to university, then three years later say: “Can I have my break now, please?”‘

Bonham Carter says she’s had her moments of regretting this decision (’Mainly when my friends went off to their universities’), just as she had pangs about her lack of formal training, but now she is at peace with it all: ‘You don’t go on regretting the things you do, do you?’ These early movies, such as A Room with a View, Maurice and Howards End were to cement Bonham Carter in the public imagination as a human Merchant Ivory corset, but all she could think about was that she couldn’t bear to watch herself on screen.

‘It’s not false modesty,’ insists Bonham Carter. ‘I hated what I looked like. I did look, as somebody said, like a bloated chipmunk! I had a lot of criticism, and I’ve always been more aware of the criticism than the praise.’

Bonham Carter says she has always hated watching herself on screen (’It’s torture!’), and has only ever liked herself in Planet of the Apes (where she wore an ape suit) and The Corpse Bride (which was animated). ‘For me, acting is about getting away from myself. So to look at myself is the last thing I want.’ Is she shy? ‘Yes, I am,’ she says, unexpectedly. ‘And I love to criticise myself. Well, I don’t love it, but you know what I mean.’

Bonham Carter was to go on to boast a more restless and adventurous CV than perhaps people realise – including turns in Woody Allen’s Mighty Aphrodite, the mother of autistic sons in Magnificent 7, and the disreputable nihilistic chain-smoking Maria in Fight Club (which won her an indie audience).

In 1997, back in a corset for The Wings of the Dove, she found herself Oscar nominated. In the end, Helen Hunt won (’For two syllables I thought I was up there,’ laughs Bonham Carter). Being nominated, she remembers, was ‘Incredibly nice. A bit like being pregnant – everyone was so friendly. Taxi drivers were saying, “Go for it!” Suddenly I felt very patriotic.’

More recently, Bonham Carter has appeared in Conversations with Other Women. Directed by first-time director Hans Canosa, and co-starring Aaron Eckhart, it tells the story of old flames meeting up at a Manhattan wedding.

Bonham Carter also appeared in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as Bellatrix Lestrange. She loved it because she loves the books, but the special effects made for a tough, drawn-out shoot. ‘You can get a bit bored,’ she winces, looking around her as if JK Rowling might be listening. ‘But it’s such fun to be involved, to be part of that world. I love witches and magic and dress-up and make-believe.’

One wonders how she perceives her own career. Part of the Bonham Carter ‘myth’ is that, from the start, she was damned by those corset-friendly ‘Edwardian’ good looks; her beauty got her noticed, but also cruelly limited her potential.

Perhaps bored of answering this kind of question, Bonham Carter just shrugs. She’s always maintained that she never set out to deliberately ’subvert’ her early roles (she makes a good point about them being leads, and therefore great for women). She also feels that everyone tends to get defined by how they look in the acting profession, not just her. ‘Even if you’ve got that interesting indie look or one of those faces that can transform, you end up getting defined by your look. You’ve just got to work with what you’ve got. And you know, it couldn’t matter less what people think after a while. You soon come to realise there’s really no point worrying about it.’

These days Bonham Carter lives with Burton in unworried, unwedded bliss in Hampstead. They first met when they were making Planet of the Apes in 2001. Is it true that the first thing Burton ever said to her was: ‘I can really see you in an ape mask’? ‘Yes,’ says Bonham Carter. ‘He said: “Don’t be offended, but you’re the first person I thought of.”‘ She grins: ‘Then he explained himself, which was much more intuitive. He said: “I just got the feeling you like to change what you look like.” And I said: ‘You’re absolutely right.”‘

She did Planet of the Apes partly because of the ape suit (’I always like to do the thing you’re never going to be able to do again’), partly because she wanted to work with Burton. ‘I was excited to work with Tim Burton, even though the script was absolutely crap,’ she says. ‘But it wasn’t a case of: “I want to work with him because I’m going to have two children with him, and he’s going to be my husband!”‘

Bonham Carter tells me that, long before she and Burton got together, one of the first conversations they ever had was about her home place, Hampstead. Burton had stayed there while filming Sleepy Hollow and told her it was the only place in the world he felt he belonged. Now he and Bonham Carter are living there together, and are perceived as an odd (as in eccentric) pair, The First Couple of Kook, but nevertheless kindred spirits, a good match.

‘Well, yes, I think we are,’ says Bonham Carter. ‘I think it’s to do with our hair – the lack of comb, the lack of hair care.’

One detail the public finds endlessly fascinating about the couple is the fact that, rather than live together conventionally, they reside in adjoining houses, rumoured to connect via a secret underground passageway (the more excitable reports have it illuminated only by candlesticks, with bats and owls swooping about). ‘We haven’t got a passageway – we’ve just got a room between the two,’ corrects Bonham Carter. ‘And to me it makes complete sense: if you’ve got some money, and you can afford it, why not have your own space?’

Why not indeed – it all sounds fine to me. I tell her that they’re the London Woody and Mia (before it all went wrong, of course). ‘Thank you,’ says Bonham Carter. ‘It really is a great idea. You never have to compromise emotionally or feel invaded.’

In their house, is it a case of Tim-Land and Helena-Land? Not really, says Bonham Carter. ‘The whole thing has morphed into Billy-Land.’ She says that she and Burton have different decors and different Sky Plus systems, but the main TV room is in one bit, and Billy is in another. ‘I’m surprised when people find it weird, to be honest,’ says Bonham Carter, looking perplexed. ‘It’s not even that separate, really – it just looks like a quite big, strange house. And there’s a sense of choice about things – you see each other when you want to.’

One thing is evident, however much she adored playing Mrs Lovett: Bonham Carter is relishing her maternal role more. Rather touchingly, she has described motherhood as ‘the ultimate creativity’, and said she’d love to do it again and again. As she says to me: ‘I’d really like six of them!’

Does Bonham Carter feel that having her children in her late thirties makes them all the more precious? ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Because you really want them by then, don’t you? You’ve made the decision. You don’t resent the time, or any loss of freedom. You’re just so very happy to have them around.’

Her life is, Bonham Carter says, just before she hands me back my tape recorder, pretty much exactly as she always wanted it to be. Does she feel fortunate that things have fallen into place for her? ‘Oh yes,’ she says. ‘I feel very lucky.’ Before Burton, Bonham Carter had a few long-term relationships (most notably with Hamlet co-star Kenneth Branagh) but they broke down before marriage and children. Was she getting anxious that she wasn’t going to become a mother? ‘When I was 35, I definitely had that feeling of, Oh my God, I’m never going to meet someone.’

Now that she is a mother, what does Bonham Carter wish for her children? ‘Obviously to give them a great sense of security. Tell them that whatever they do is wonderful!’ Bonham Carter peals with laughter. ‘Because it is, it is. You’re so enchanted by them. Before you’re a mother you’ll never know how much in love you’ll be.’

As we prepare to leave, I ask Bonham Carter if Burton was equally as excited to become a parent. ‘Totally. He’s very childlike anyway. He’s never let go of his inner child. Or his outer child!’ How about her? Bonham Carter shifts in her chair: ‘It does make you grow up, doesn’t it?’ she says. ‘But it makes you grow down, too. It brings back the child in you.’

In a way, it seems, it takes Bonham Carter back to her own childhood, and what first attracted her to acting: ‘It’s taken way too seriously – it’s all just dress-up and make-believe.’ Does she think there should always be an element of play in acting? ‘Oh yes. That and transforming. You know – getting away as far away from yourself as possible.’ But why would she need to get ‘far away’ from herself? ‘Because,’ smiles Bonham Carter, ‘that’s what makes me feel liberated.’

from Time Out New York, Issue 639 : December 27, 2007 – January 2, 2008

by Smith Galtney

As British icons go, Helena Bonham Carter’s up there with Tony Blair and clotted cream. Simply pronouncing her name is enough to make you feel refined and dignified. But the 41-year-old actor sure as hell doesn’t suffer from stiff-upper-lip syndrome: Talk with her for 30 minutes and chances are you’ll blush and crack up, then hope she’ll become your lifelong friend and/or lover.

Preparing for the role of Mrs. Lovett in the long-anticipated, megaviolent film version of Stephen Sondheim’s morbid musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Bonham Carter faced the biggest challenge of her career: training for two and a half months with famed vocal coach Ian Adam, who died one week after filming wrapped. Envious rivals will assume she got the part by sleeping with the film’s director, Tim Burton—the father of her son, Billy-Ray, and the man she shares adjacent homes with (they connect via hallway) in London. Bonham Carter is quick to emphasize she was chosen by Sondheim.

TONY (Time Out New York) talked to the actor on the phone from London, just days before she gave birth to her second child with Burton. By the time you read this, she’ll be up to her porcelain chin in soiled bibs and poopy diapers.

TONY: How do you feel? Are you nervous about the birth?
Helena: It’s all been a bit stressful with the movie coming up. My real worry is that I won’t be able to hold off until Tim gets back from the States. But other than that, no—not really. Truth be told, I’m rather looking forward to the epidural.

TONY: Not a fan of going au naturel?
Helena: Oh God, no. Besides, if someone offers you drugs, and it’s free and legal, and there’s a good reason for it, and it’s good quality? Why would you not get high?

TONY: Are you the breast-feeding type?
Helena: I think it’s wonderful. You know you’re providing a real service. After carrying around your boobs for so long, it’s nice to know they have an actual purpose.

TONY: Surely there’s a dark side, too.
Helena: Well, Billy was a bit of a succubus. It gets to a point where you feel awkward. If they can crawl up and reach for it, perhaps it’s time to move on.

TONY: What tricks did you learn while training for Sweeney Todd?
Helena: Smile when you want to hit a high note. When you want to go high, think low, and vice versa. I also got a flat tummy without once going to the gym.

TONY: Thanks to breathing exercises?
Helena: You’ve got to sing from your “front bottom,” as it were. Although Ian wouldn’t call it that, he’d just shout, “Sing from your cunt!” He was also fond of emphasizing exactly where that was, so he’d scream, “You’re not singing from your cunt!” Then he’d storm over and molest you.

TONY: So in polite company, I could say, “So-and-so is quite the front bottom”?
Helena: That’s what I do, but not Ian. He goes straight for the c-u-n-t.

TONY: That makes for a fitting segue into asking what Broadway snobs think of your performance.
Helena: People are going to think what they want. Both Johnny [Depp] and I kept singing high and enunciating sharply, but Tim discouraged that. He was like, “Don’t do that Broadway thing!”

TONY: How do you maintain an “office romance”?
Helena: I’m afraid I don’t have anything positive to say about that. Being involved with people you work with is not a very good idea. To make it work, Tim and I had to lay down some commandments, set some rules.

TONY: Such as?
Helena: For me, it was a matter of learning to shut my mouth, because my initial instinct is to talk and talk and go on about what I think. And he’s not very forthcoming with compliments, so I needed a bit of reassurance here and there. And no talking about [work] at home, of course.

TONY: I bet you’re fun to hang out with.
Helena: That’s very sweet. Unfortunately, I won’t be hanging out with you or anyone else for the next week or so. Something will be hanging out of me, that’s for sure.

TONY: The miracle of birth.
Helena: Yes—very wet, with lots of blood and gore and bodily fluids. Just like Sweeney Todd, really.

From the Los Angeles Times, December 28, 2007

by Mark Salisbury

LONDON — “I remember courting over ‘Sweeney,’ ” says Helena Bonham Carter, 8 1/2 months pregnant, perched on the edge of a sofa in a hotel room in late November, looking as if she might give birth at any second. “I remember us listening to the whole score one Saturday, six years ago, and him even mentioning then, ‘One day . . . .’ It was definitely something we had in common.”

The “him,” of course, is Tim Burton, Bonham Carter’s off-screen partner of six years, father of her two children (Billy, 4, and their infant daughter, born in mid-December) and director of “Sweeney Todd,” in which Bonham Carter stars opposite Johnny Depp as Mrs. Lovett, a widowed baker in Victorian London who uses the flesh of the victims Todd murders as the filling for her meat pies.

In Burton’s film, she’s younger than her onstage counterparts, more flirtatious, less “Broadway,” with a touch of Baby Jane about her. “You can play it so broadly and quite crudely, and in a way she’s been played almost like straight out of music hall,” explains Bonham Carter, 41. “But it wouldn’t play well on film. Certainly Tim wouldn’t allow me, because his tastes are so anti-theatrical.”

Restraint, quite literally, was a hallmark of Bonham Carter’s early career, which began in 1984, when the actress made her film debut as England’s nine-day queen in “Lady Jane.” For the next decade, she would earn a reputation as Britain’s “corset queen,” Merchant Ivory’s doe-eyed, alabaster-skinned, go-to girl for E.M. Forster adaptations — appearing in “A Room With a View” as the parasol-twirling Lucy and a string of other period costume dramas, including “Maurice,” “Where Angels Fear to Tread” and “Howards End.”

Bonham Carter’s career trajectory began to change after a turn as an unfaithful wife in Woody Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite” in 1995, though she would earn an Oscar nomination three years later for yet another period costumer, the Henry James adaptation “The Wings of the Dove.” Since then, though, she’s played an eclectic mix of characters — a junkie in “Novocaine,” chain-smoking femme fatale in “Fight Club” and leather-clad Bellatrix Lestrange in “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” a role she’s set to reprise in the next installment of the franchise, “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.”

Of course, her portrayal of a chimp in Burton’s remake of “Planet of the Apes” affected her life most profoundly — given that it led to her relationship with the director. But it was only after that film was released and Burton had moved to London after splitting with his long-term girlfriend, actress Lisa Marie, that the pair became romantically linked. Six years later, in addition to two children, they now share adjacent properties in north London, as well as a similar taste for birds’ nest hairdos.

The couple’s shared affection for unkempt coiffures is readily apparent in “Sweeney Todd,” but they also agreed on the way Bonham Carter wanted to approach her character. “I wanted to bring out [Mrs. Lovett's] sexuality,” says Bonham Carter, who, along with Burton and Depp, received a Golden Globe nomination for her work in the film. “She’s often played older and more maternal, and what’s so fantastic is she’s got the potential to be anything and everything. . . . She’s a tough, pragmatic survivor, but she’s as vital and zestful as Sweeney is sensitive and depressive and introverted. And she’s completely delusional.”

Landing the role, however, wasn’t easy — Burton was aware of how it might seem, hiring his girlfriend. In fact, according to “Sweeney Todd” producer Richard D. Zanuck, Bonham Carter stood less of a chance than anybody to play Mrs. Lovett. Nevertheless, she spent three months working with a singing teacher, learning the entire score, before auditioning for Burton — who then auditioned more than half a dozen other big-name actresses in London and New York before even viewing her tape.

“He was ruthlessly impartial on this,” she notes, “and there was a dead silence between my auditioning and the five weeks later when he decided. It was like the elephant in the room. . . . And then, when he’d seen everybody else, we were all videoed, our auditions, then he saw it and said he was surprised.”

“I wanted to make sure that she was really, really right for it, which she was and is,” offers Burton. (Not that Burton had the final say anyway, with Sondheim contractually having casting approval over both Todd and Mrs. Lovett.)

“It would have been pretty hard for me to . . . watch somebody else do it,” she acknowledges. “But at the same time, once we started there was a lot of pressure, because if I was crap, we’d both look crap. It was a risk.”

Although Bonham Carter had starred in “Planet of the Apes,” since she and Burton had become an item she’d had only smallish parts in his films “Big Fish” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” Playing one of the leads inevitably caused some friction.

“It had certain stresses,” she begins. “He was so polite to me on ‘Planet of the Apes,’ and very respectful, and there was a case of being a bit of a slave on this one. I sort of collected rules as we went on, for working together, because it became very obvious that there were boundaries we shouldn’t cross. One was, obviously, never talk about it once you’re at home; don’t take advantage of this physical proximity to pop in a question about anything. He needed his downtime.”

“But,” she continues, looking at her belly and smiling, “[it] couldn’t have been that bad because of what happened.”

from the Montreal Gazette, December 20, 2007

by Jamie Portman

Helena Bonham Carter and companion Tim Burton share a love of the musical version of this bloody story. Now, Burton has cast his significant other as Mrs. Lovett in the film

She’s tiny. She’s feisty. And she’s funny.

Furthermore, Helena Bonham Carter is always ready to speak her mind.

Take the subject of her significant other, director Tim Burton, for whom she worked in Sweeney Todd. It’s no surprise that Bonham Carter’s performance has earned her a Golden Globe nomination: She’s marvellous in the role of the infamous Nellie Lovett, maker of the worst meat pies in London and the diminutive accomplice of Johnny Depp’s murderous, razor-wielding barber, Sweeney Todd. It’s a role she had wanted to play since she was a youngster – but things weren’t always sweetness and light on the set.

“There were some days where it was pretty hellish, frankly. But I think Tim is very good at getting a good performance out of me, even if I don’t agree with him all the time.”

So how do they settle their arguments?

“I usually end up doing what he tells me. Yeah. If he’s the director, I’ll do what he tells me – but at home …”

What about their home life? Are there times when Helena tells Tim that he’ll be sleeping in the other bedroom that night?

“Oh, he sleeps in the other room anyway!”

It may not be your typical relationship, but it’s one that endures. When Bonham Carter talked to reporters in London in late November, she was pregnant with the couple’s second child, happy but also visibly uncomfortable as she seated herself at the interview table. But she made it clear she will do anything to make Sweeney Todd a success because she loves everything about it, from the gory deaths to the cockroaches in Mrs. Lovett’s kitchen.

She was also, as usual, looking scruffy, with her uncombed hair flying off in all directions; Bonham Carter may come from a blueblood English family and be the great-granddaughter of a former prime minister, but when she meets reporters she often gives the impression of having raided the local thrift shop.

Her passion for the movie stems from her passion for the award-winning Stephen Sondheim stage musical on which it is based. In fact, Sweeney Todd is one reason she ended up in a relationship with Burton: They discovered they both loved the show.

“We courted over it,” she said.

The film is the latest blood-spattered incarnation of a centuries-old London legend about vengeful barber Sweeney Todd, who declares war on society by slashing the throats of customers in his barber’s chair, then dumping the corpses down a chute to the cellar. That’s where Bonham Carter’s Nellie Lovett is waiting, hacking utensils at the ready, to transform the remains into another set of succulent meat pies.

“It wasn’t like I was consciously thinking, ‘God, I love Mrs. Lovett’ every single day of my life since I was 13. But I saw it when I was 13. When I first heard it, I was 13. And I loved it and I loved the score.”

It was still that way when Burton entered her life.

“One of our mutual passions was the musical. I remember when we were getting together, we played it.”

This isn’t the first time Burton has cast Bonham Carter in a movie – she was also a striking presence in Planet of the Apes and Big Fish. But, as always, she had to earn the role.

“He doesn’t give them to me. I have to work for them. I definitely had to do it for this. I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard.”

She remembers the night when Burton told her he was going to direct Sweeney Todd on film. He knew how much she would want to be part of it, but was careful to lay out the requirements.

“I think you’re right for it,” he told her. “It would be wrong for you not to be considered just because you go out with me. However, you’re going to have to audition along with everybody else who wants it. It’s up to you.”

Bonham Carter’s response was immediate: “Of course, I’ll go for it. If I don’t get the part, at least I’ll have learned how to sing and had the voice lessons I always wanted anyway.”

She went to a singing teacher – and won the part. Which, in the case of this film, meant winning the nod of Sondheim himself.

“It was scary,” she said matter-of-factly. “I just had no choice, because I so love Sondheim. And I love the material and the music and the lyrics. He’s a genius. So I just thought, I can’t lose.”

However, tackling a Sondheim song means navigating through brilliantly intricate lyrics and melodic lines that often revel in unexpected modulations and key changes. Bonham Carter knew it would be “a tall order even to learn to sing properly in three months.” She also knew she’d never forgive herself if she didn’t try. “So I did it,” she said.

Her most important audition for Burton and Sondheim was done on video. “And then Tim didn’t talk about it for five weeks. That was tough. Then he auditioned other people – and didn’t talk about it. It was like the elephant in the room for five weeks.

“And then, he finally said: ‘You know what? I think you’re right. You can sing this part.’ And then, luckily, Sondheim agreed with Tim.”

It wasn’t just the singing that challenged Bonham Carter. It was creating a credible portrait of a character who defies credibility.

“She was so complex. She could have so many different colours. You could play it billions of different ways. That’s always the exciting thing with a part when it’s well written. So many different ideas occur to you.”

She doesn’t see Mrs. Lovett as an out-and-out villain.

“I don’t think she’s a baddie. I think they’re both victims in a way, (but) she has no excuses for what she does.”

She sees Depp’s Sweeney Todd as an obvious victim because his life has been destroyed by the loss of a wife and child, and by a corrupt legal system that has caused him to be deported to the other side of the world. “So you can kind of justify his killing – you can see a reason behind it,” she said with a laugh. “He goes off the deep end.”

Mrs. Lovett is more complicated. “She’s amoral. … She’s pretty mad and delusional herself.”

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street opens in Montreal theatres tomorrow.

From MTV (December 18, 2007)

by Jennifer Vineyard

‘I had a huge amount of compassion and time for Mrs. Lovett,’ actress says of ‘Sweeney’ role.

What could be better than playing a crazy lady in a Harry Potter movie? Maybe playing a singing crazy lady in a new movie directed by your boyfriend — especially if he happens to be Tim Burton.

The director’s new film version of the 1979 Broadway musical “Sweeney Todd” is a feast for the eyes and the ears — and a bloody great showcase for Helena Bonham Carter, who apparently had a ball getting all uglied up to star opposite Johnny Depp in one of her favorite musicals of all time.

MTV: You’ve wanted to play Mrs. Lovett since you were a teenager. Was it just because you wanted to shake some sense into her?

Helena Bonham Carter: [She laughs.] You know what? I just loved “Sweeney Todd,” definitely. I did love the musical. I just love Stephen Sondheim. So, yeah, when I was 13, I guess I did. I went around in her hairdo. A friend of mine even used to call me Mrs. Lovett. That was my nickname! I was a strange child, I guess.

So when this part came, I just thought, ‘She’s such a fantastic part. She can be played so many different ways.’ She’d been played in a pretty subversive way — I mean, Angela Lansbury played her in a specific way — but it really belonged onstage. So the opportunity to do her on film, when you can do just lots of other choices, I thought she could be a bit more clever than the way she’d previously been played. She could be. And Tim also, his whole vision of it was that he wanted both [Mrs. Lovett and Sweeney Todd] to be younger, so there was a bit of hope of a romance. And so I sort of thought, ‘Well, I really want to bring out the fact that she’s a woman, and a sensuous, sexual being, and her yearning and her love and adoration for this man who won’t even notice her.’

MTV: The most she can hope for in her wildest fantasy is that he’ll kind of put his hand on her leg, as he does during the song “By the Sea.”

Carter: Yeah, that’s major physical contact, like “E.T.” That’s about it. So, yeah, there’s something pretty poignant about her.

MTV: Sweeney Todd murders random innocent men in his quest for revenge, while she hides the bodies in her meat pies and serves them to unsuspecting customers. But Sweeney’s need for revenge might not have been so bloody without her little lie. Do you think what she does is worse in a way?

Carter: In a way she is more reprehensible, yeah. But only because she loves him so much. She just can’t bear to lose him, and that’s why she lies. She is basically way more immoral, or amoral. She doesn’t think twice about popping a body in a pie. Whereas he, you realize that he’s really been just set off the deep end because of this horrible tragedy that’s been dealt to him. … But life was tough back then at the bottom of the pile in Victorian England. She’s a tough, pragmatic survivor but really full of energy and zest and life.

MTV: How would you rate Mrs. Lovett against other villainesses you’ve played, such as, say, Bellatrix Lestrange from “Harry Potter”?

Carter: It’s funny. It’s like, the first thing you think when you get a baddie to play is that you stop thinking they’re a baddie. You can’t really play a baddie if you think you’re a baddie. You just find a way in. Once you’re inside, from their point of view, you can’t judge yourself morally. I never thought she was a baddie. I had a huge amount of compassion and time for Mrs. Lovett.

MTV: Do you have compassion for Bellatrix?

Carter: For Bellatrix? Yeah. Anybody who tends to be a baddie or a psychotic, they tend to be damaged in a really fundamental way. There’s a vulnerability, a deep vulnerability, a wound.

MTV: Both are in love with these really horrible men.

Carter: That’s true, I hadn’t thought about that. Men who really have no time for them and basically abuse them. Definitely an abusive relationship, yeah.

MTV: So Sweeney is Mrs. Lovett’s Voldemort.

Carter: That’s true. And this [she pats her pregnant belly] is little Voldemort. Little Sweeney. [She giggles.]

from Parade Magazine:

From showbizspy.com (December 13, 2007)

by Owen Williams

British star Helena Bonham-Carter has given her son a doll, so he can get used to the idea of having a baby brother or sister.

According to the actress Billy Ray has already thrown himself into the role.

“He just turned four, is in preschool, and we’ve gotten him a baby doll so he can get used to the idea of having a sibling,” she says.

“He’s already teaching the ‘baby’ that he shouldn’t swallow marbles.”

Billy Ray is Bonham-Carter’s first child, whom she had with partner Tim Burton. The actress is pregnant with their second child.

Bonham-Carter, who is due to give birth this month, also told US magazine, Parade: “I’m a huge globe.”

Burton has cast his partner in yet another one of his movies – Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. But although the couple has collaborated on films before – such as Big Fish and Corpse Bride – the actress says she was not destined to win the role of Mrs Lovett.

She even had to audition for the part opposite screen hunk Johnny Depp. She says: “Stephen Sondheim reserved the casting rights to Mrs Lovett, a role I really wanted. “Tim was the most professional, professional. He wouldn’t even tell me how auditions were going.”

Nevertheless, Bonham-Carter says she was thrilled when told she won the role, despite admittedly not being the best singer that was seen. She says that when she was told she would play Mrs Lovett it was: “Probably the best day of my life.”

She was then sent off to see “a brilliant singing teacher.”

Her co-star Johnny Depp, 44, also sings in the film. But Bonham-Carter says: “Johnny once had a band. So he has an interesting take on the part.”

She says that Depp – her son’s godfather – has “got such physical grace.”

She adds: “The effect is a bit modern, a bit rock.”

Many thanks to H. for sending the scans of Playboy’s 20 questions with Helena (January 2008 edition).

Lovely photo and Helena is hilarious!

Here’s the 21st question from playboy.com:
Question: You appeared in two episodes of Miami Vice as Don Johnson’s drug-addict girlfriend. What were the real Crockett and Tubbs like?

Helena: That was hysterical. It was a bit of a culture shock to be flown out from London to Miami. When they saw me they said, “She looks four years old.” I was meant to play a qualified doctor so they started putting latex on me to make me look older so I wouldn’t make Don Johnson look like a pedophile. That didn’t really work, but I ended up doing it anyway. It was surreal. Here I was 19 or something and I was a big fan of Miami Vice. I couldn’t believe it that I’d sort of stepped through into the television.

If you follow the link below you can watch an interview of Helena talking about “Sweeney Todd”:

http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_13678.html

 Enjoy!

Here’s a short clip of Helena talking about “Sweeney Todd” and you can also see and hear her singing “By the Sea”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px-XR4tneTM