Here are some photos of Helena and Tim from the screening of “The Nightmare before Christmas in 3D” at the London Film Festival on October 29, 2006:
source: empireonline.com
Here’s Helena’s song from “Corpse Bride” – “Tears to Shed”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoLY2QRoV1w
According to an article Tim Burton asked her to keep her voice up:
How did he direct her in the movie? It’s now the fourth they’ve done together. The dynamics between couples in such situations can be tricky. “Well, he wasn’t always there,” she recalls, “but he was there for the last session – he just told me to keep my voice up, since my voice is naturally quite low and he wanted a higher register. And try not to be so harsh, he said – maybe something to do with our relationship. Like I’m a husband-beater.” And she leapt at the chance to sing a song in the movie, scored by Burton regular Danny Elfman. “I love show tunes,” Bonham Carter exclaims brightly. “I’m a gay man at heart.”
I guess, she’ll probably have a lower voice for “Sweeney Todd”.
By Siobhan Synnot (The Daily Record)
Both of us love What Not To Wear but we always prefer ‘before’ outfits
IT’S hard to believe that Helena Bonham Carter turned 40 earlier this year, but she seems determined to shake things up with a series of surprisingly modern roles, onscreen and off.
Over the past decade, the costume-drama queen has moved out of her parents’ home (where she lived until she was 30), taken on more modern roles, settled down with director Tim Burton and started a family – her son Billy Ray celebrated his third birthday this month.
She’s also sent a defiant sign to those who scoff at her wayward sense of style by setting up her own designer brand of jeans.
Helena earned her reputation as her generation’s “English rose” with a series of bonnet-busters including Hamlet, Lady Jane, Howard’s End, Room With a View and The Wings of a Dove.
But she could also be forthright, funny and frank – qualities put to great use in more modern fare like Fight Club.
In her new film, Sixty Six, Helena abandons her old-fashioned style, playing a North London Jewish mother.
“My mum was so pleased I was doing this film,” she laughs. “I am half French, half Spanish and Jewish – but I’m always seen as very British. I’m finally getting in touch with my Jewish roots.”
It’s also the first time Helena has played a mother since she became one herself.
She said: “Motherhood totally changes you. Bits of your heart you never knew existed suddenly come alive.
“Since Billy was born I’ve become more picky about choosing my roles. You have to decide if you want to spend the next three months of your child’s life on a film set or not. I’m aware my time is more precious now.”
Tim and Helena first met on the set of 2001’s Planet of the Apes, then reunited again on the 2003 movie Big Fish.
When she first became involved with Tim, his girlfriend, Lisa Marie was livid. But Helena has always insisted she and Burton began their relationship after he broke up with Lisa Marie. After the filming of Big Fish was over, Tim moved to London to share his life with Helena.
Home for them today is actually in two houses. The house next door to Helena’s came up for sale when she and Burton got together, so they now have a connecting room built between the two.
There are no plans for another child as yet – but then, it could be said that Helena already has two kids.
Tim Burton may be a director in charge of multi-million dollar movies, but according to Helena, he’s a child at heart, and the 48-year-old is never happier than when he’s surrounded by gadgets and comics.
“I think Billy’s going to overtake Tim at some point,” she laughs.
The unconventional couple have also attracted their fair share of fashion criticism in the past. Both favour the through-a-hedge-backwards approach to haircare, and their fashion sense is slightly on the gothic side – Tim likes anything as long as it comes in black, while Helena has raised eyebrows by turning up at awards ceremonies in clothes that seem to have come out of a Victorian dressing-up box.
“I am so not Mrs Style. I am not your Sienna or what have you. I’m the Antichrist of fashion,” she says dryly.
Now Helena’s decided to send out a defiant message to those who knock her sense of style by launching a fashion line called the Pantaloonies, with swimwear designer Samantha Sage, featuring Victorian-style camisoles, caps and bloomers with a modern twist.
And she says she and Tim prefer the style of the people onWhat Not To Wear BEFORE they get their makeover.
She said: “Our taste might be somewhat different to other people’s, but when we watch Trinny and Susannah, we always think they make people look worse.”
But Helena also admits that she has tweaked her fiance’s clothes a little.
“I buy him coloured shirts to get him out of the black. And sometimes he does actually wear them.
“But I certainly wouldn’t change Tim. I did fall in love with him for what he is. He’s adorable. He will always have the tinted glasses. And the hair.”
THE couple seem to relish working together, even though Helena laughs at the idea that Tim gives his partner any special treatment when they work on a film
Helena said: “Big Fish was the first thing we did together after we got together. In fact, I was pregnant with his child. On the first day’s filming, he completely ignored me.
“Ewan McGregor got all of Tim’s praise. All I got was: ‘Let’s move on, that’ll do.’ At the end of the day, I said: ‘You can talk to me, you know.’ Tim said he just didn’t want people thinking he was showing me favouritism.
‘The next day, he was moving chairs for me, bringing me tea and coffee. But to be honest, when you start concentrating on the task in hand, you tend to forget you’re working with your other half. It’s not strange at all.”
Helena is that rare thing, acting aristocracy. Her great-grandad was prime minister Herbert Asquith, but her life has not been an easy one. When she was five, her mother had a nervous breakdown, and a botched operation left her dad paralysed when she was 13. At that point, the teenage Helena decided to start working and found herself modelling and acting.
She was 19 when acclaimed filmmaking duo Ismail Merchant and James Ivory decided she was perfect for the movie A Room With a View.
Another corset role followed with The Wings of the Dove, which earned her Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for best actress.
Helena has managed to keep working in a notoriously fickle business, but she’s as amazed as anyone at her lengthy career, which hasn’t been without its hiccups.
One of her earliest American roles was in Eighties cop show classic Miami Vice, where Helena was cast as a top surgeon and the love interest for Don Johnson’s character Sonny Crockett.
When the 21-year-old Helena arrived on set, the producers went into a flap because she looked too young for her character.
Helena recalls: “When I arrived they said, ‘Oh my God, she looks like a child. Don Johnson is going to have a relationship with you and he’ll look like a paedophile. This is just horrendous.’” she laughs.
“They tried to put latex on me to look older. The whole thing was absurd.”
Ironically, husband Tim Burton appears to enjoy hi ding his partner’s fabulous looks under layers of make-up.
He cast her as a chimp in Planet of the Apes, a witch in Big Fish, and the poor, unglamorous mother of the young hero in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
“He loves it,” she giggles. “But you know what – I love it even more.”
The couple are in the early stages of another collaboration – a film version of the musical Sweeney Todd, with Johnny Depp as the butchering barber, and Helena as Mrs Lovett, a woman whose tasty meat pies include a special new ingredient.
Helena’s already taken up singing lessons for the role – but she has also signed on to play Bellatrix Lestrange in the next Harry Potter film.
“I think JK Rowling is a genius.” she said.
“And Bella,” says Helena with undisguised delight, “is a very bad, bad, bad witch.”
HELENA BONHAM CARTER was forced to miss the London premiere of her new movie SIXTY SIX on Monday (23OCT06) after her two-year-old boy broke his arm.
Bonham Carter had no choice but to abandon her plans after her son with film-maker TIM BURTON, BILLY RAY, had to be rushed to hospital after an accident at home.
Her spokeswoman says, “He broke it falling off a sofa.
“He had to be put under at the hospital on Monday night to get it fixed and Helena needed to be there.
“She’d never have forgiven herself otherwise.”
source: PR-inside.com
In July 1966, three people turned up to help Paul Weiland celebrate his big day – everyone else was watching the World Cup Final. He tells Catherine Shoard how, in his film Sixty Six, he finally gets to be on the winning side
Paul Weiland’s 50th birthday party was not your usual knees-up. There was champagne on tap, a gospel choir, a helipad. Specially commissioned flags lined the avenues of his 45-acre Wiltshire estate. There was a candlelit banquet on the first night, deluxe brunch the morning after. You may not have heard of Weiland – he’s Britain’s leading maker of commercials, with a sideline directing Mr Bean episodes – but the guest list was red-carpet starry.
Gary Lineker (with whom Weiland shot the Walkers ads) put on his tux, likewise Alan Yentob, Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Fry, Peter Gabriel, Anthony Minghella, Harry Enfield, Sebastian Faulks, Loyd Grossman, Tim Burton and Angus Deayton. Plus 250 others. After dinner, his best friend, Richard Curtis, made a speech calling Weiland the most generous and considerate man he had ever met. Then Weiland thanked the guests for coming. It was, he said, a far cry from his bar mitzvah. That party had a total of three guests, none of them happy to be there. Why? Well, it fell on the same afternoon as the 1966 World Cup final. It was a miserable event, not helped by the fact that the synagogue was within earshot of Wembley.
‘I remember thinking, “this is the funniest party speech ever”,’ says Helena Bonham Carter, who was at the party. ‘It was hysterical.’ When Weiland sat down, Curtis said they should make the story into a film. Bonham Carter agreed – and said that she would love to play his mother.
Three years on, and Sixty Six is set for release. Directed by Weiland and written in collaboration with Curtis, it stars a newcomer, Gregg Sulkin, as 12-year-old Bernie Rueben (aka Paul), speccy, dopey, asthmatic – a far cry from the friendly, self-aware sophisticate Weiland resembles today. Eddie Marsan plays Manny, Bernie’s hopeless father, a failing grocery-store owner plagued by obsessive compulsive disorder and chronic humourlessness. And Bonham Carter does indeed play his mother, Esther.
‘That’s how I passed it with my real Mum,’ says Weiland, ‘by telling her Helena would play her.’ Bonham Carter returns the compliment. ‘She is unbelievably beautiful.
I saw a photo of her and I was like, Oh my God! Such glamour!’ Bonham Carter spends a lot of time with children these days – she has a three-year-old son, Billy, with her husband, Tim Burton, and a recurring role in Harry Potter – but, even so, the social-climbing Jewish momma seems quite a stretch.
‘In fact, it sat really easily with me,’ she says. ‘People always think I’m indelibly English, but actually I was brought up in Golders Green and there’s tons of Jewish blood on my mother’s side. I think I’m quite maternal and caring. I felt very comfy with it.’ So comfy that, after the first read-through, Weiland took her to one side and asked her to tone down the ‘Oy veys’. Bonham Carter laughs. ‘I was off-the-Richter-scale Jewish. I sounded like Maureen Lipman. ‘
Sixty Six is in many ways a typical Working Title production. It’s tender and funny and has a feel-good ending which involves Manny being cured of his OCD and facing up to his failings. There’s even a cross-city car chase (as in Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill) so that young Bernie can shake hands with Bobby Moore and the rest of the winning team.
The truth, however, is rather darker. ‘If I had made Sixty Six more accurately, it would have been a Mike Leigh film,’ admits Weiland. Bergman seems closer to the mark. Far from having a miraculous recovery, Paul’s father became increasingly ill and introspective. Esther continued to devote all her energies to caring for her husband. Paul’s self-esteem plummeted still further. He left home at 15 – quickly rising in the world of advertising, mentored by the likes of Alan Parker and David Bailey. He has now directed more than 600 commercials and his company represents almost all the ad-makers in Britain. ‘That’s the thing,’ he says. ‘Being unhappy when you’re young gives you a real drive to escape and achieve. I could fix my own life, but as much as I tried, I couldn’t fix my father’s.’
In Sixty Six he gets the chance. It’s wish-fulfilment on a grand scale – history rewritten, traumas undone. Understandable enough, you might think. Ever the ad-man, Weiland is simply putting an optimistic spin on things and, after all, you’re not going to shift a product unless it makes people smile. What’s slightly dismaying is just how accurately Weiland has reconstructed the details of his childhood.
His mother has since moved to Southgate, north London (his father died a few years ago), but she’s kept most of the interior decor, and Weiland just transferred it to Pinewood for the film. ‘His poor Mum!’ says Bonham Carter. ‘We steadily took everything – the trinkets, the paintings, the doorbell, the rug they put over the carpet to keep it clean. She was left in an empty shell of a place.
‘Paul was quite obsessive about it all being accurate. I remember one scene where I had to be on the phone and the props man brought in this old Bakelite one. Paul took one look at it and said, “Nah, I had a cream one.” Actually, it was great – it’s really unusual that a director knows so much about the subject.’ She laughs. ‘But I was worried for his sanity.’
There’s no whiff of bourgeois bad taste in Weiland’s current north London home – a double-fronted, five-storey white stucco number in Maida Vale that he shares with his wife, Caroline, and their four children (Max, 18, Hannah, 16, Bella, 13 and Joe, nine).
Rather than hoarding his money in the attic as his father had done, Weiland has put his prodigious wealth on proud display. Diptyque candles burn away merrily. A Warhol original beams down at you in one of the reception rooms. There are glass floors and cavernous marble fireplaces. Instead of covering the sofas in dustsheets as his parents did, Weiland has vast, five-seater couches in eminently stainable white. There are a couple of games rooms, and a kitchen the size of a football pitch. It’s quite extraordinary, immaculately tidy and sparkling. If you could choose any house in London for the ultimate glitzy party, this would be the place.
That’s obviously the idea. ‘I love to be the host,’ Weiland says, smiling. ‘To make people feel welcome. When my children were growing up, we used to go down to the house in Wiltshire every weekend and have people round. It was idyllic. We’d make them feel like they’d stayed in a hotel.’
The more you speak to him, the more it becomes clear Weiland has geared his whole life around not following in his father’s footsteps. ‘When I was growing up, everyone thought my dad was a bit of a putz. My friends didn’t seem to want to come back to our house. It’s the same these days with my kids. You realise that there are still houses friends want to come back to and houses they don’t.’
That Weiland’s house is one people are clamouring to get into – Ruby Wax tells me she encouraged her daughter to become friends with his for that very reason – is a source of great pride. But his children are growing up. They no longer want to be part of his jumbo bonhomie. And Weiland is in therapy trying to cope with it. ‘The minute your kids hit 14 they want you out of their life. It’s horrible. They’ve always got some excuse why they’re not coming down to Wiltshire. “Daddy I’ve got a party; Daddy I’ve got life-drawing class.” It’s terribly disappointing, but inevitable, I suppose. And we did have 15 idyllic years.’
I wonder if he worries that they were too idyllic. That by giving his children such a cushioned childhood he’s made them less hungry for success. ‘I worry like mad about that. They haven’t suffered. They won’t have the ambition I did. But they will be more well-rounded. And I hope they won’t be as troubled as me.’
For all his success and self-knowledge and army of friends and admirers, Weiland does seem oddly vulnerable. Sebastian Faulks says: ‘Behind the exuberance and the piss-taking, there is a fat streak of Jewish melancholy. Sometimes in his big sad eyes you see a sense of panic that the Real Thing is happening in another room and no one’s told him.’
Weiland is still striving. As an ad man, in particular one without an O-level to his name, he feels a little under-appreciated, unrespected even, by his peers. As a maker of hit feature films, however, it would be a different story. He has made a couple in the past – City Slickers 2 (1994) and Roseanna’s Grave (1997) – both flops. The fate of Sixty Six is, then, of raw importance, not to mention the fact that it’s about his own childhood.
His friends all agree how keenly he may feel its success or failure. ‘I don’t think there’s anything more important to him,’ says Ruby Wax. ‘It’s gonna kill him. When it’s the story of your life you’ve got a lot more riding on it.’
‘It’s huge for me,’ says Weiland. ‘It’s the same thing I wondered when I was planning my bar mitzvah: will this finally be the time I get seen on the stage I want to get seen on?’ But Weiland has at least been savvier with the scheduling this time round.
Sixty Six opens on 3 November. The biggest football fixture that day is Burton Albion v Stevenage.
Tim Burton was on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” on October 17, 2006. He talked a little bit about Billy and about German reporters asking him about Helena and him living in houses connected BY A TUNNEL! He’s hilarious! And if you have ever asked yourself how “Helena Bonham Carter” is pronounced, he says her name (and he should know) 
Tim Burton was on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” on October 17, 2006. He talked a little bit about Billy and about German reporters asking him about Helena and him living in houses connected BY A TUNNEL! He’s hilarious! And if you have ever asked yourself how “Helena Bonham Carter” is pronounced, he says her name (and he should know) 
Helena Bonham Carter is undergoing a strict regime to keep her voice tip top for the film version of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sweeney Todd. Even though her partner, Tim Burton, is directing the film, she still had to jump through vocal hoops before Sondheim agreed to her being cast as Mrs Lovett, who turned the murderous barber’s victims into pies. Helena can carry a tune, but the score is demanding and she will work with a singing coach until she, Johnny Depp (in the title role) and other cast members – rumoured to include Sacha Baron Cohen (whose Borat film is the side-splitter of the year) and Laura Michelle Kelly – go into a recording studio next month and start laying down tracks. Filming will be at Pinewood Studios and across London in the New Year. Helena can be seen in the touching, bittersweet film Sixty Six, which opens here on November 3. Once upon a time, Sam Mendes had an idea of making Sweeney Todd, with Russell Crowe as the demon barber of Fleet Street… source: The Daily Mail
by The Daily Mail
Helena Bonham Carter is well known for her costume dramas – but forget about empire dresses and clipped English accents – her new film certainly has the costumes and the drama but it’s more beehives and Bar Mitzvahs as the actress stars in sixties set Jewish family comedy Sixty Six.
The actress plays Esther, glamorous wife and mother to the working class Rubens family. Her husband Manny is distracted by the newly opened supermarket threatening the family business and her two children Alvie and Bernie don’t make things easy for her either.
The story is centred around youngest son Bernie who tends to get neglected in the drama of family life. However, he believes this is all set to change as he approaches manhood and his Bar Mitzvah.
Hoping for a lavish affair and a chance to be the centre of attention for once in his life the teenager’s hopes are dashed as England’s World Cup final overshadows his big day.
Here Helena Bonham Carter talks about the film:
As it was the year of your birth you presumably don’t have many memories of 1966, do you?
HBC: I can’t really remember much about that year to be honest, because I was born in the May. But it was a pretty good education doing the film – and it’s all a bit tragic that that’s the last time we won the World Cup. But it’s true, I do claim a certain ownership of the year, having been born in it.
So how did you get involved in the film?
HBC: I was at the fateful 50th birthday party that Paul Weiland held, when he gave one of the funniest speeches I’d ever heard.
This was about how the only other party he’d really had in his life was a complete disaster because no-one came to it – and that turned out to be the basic idea of the film.
Half the people from Working Title were there, so if he’d intended it as a pitch he’d planned it perfectly.
The part you play was inspired by Paul’s own mother, wasn’t she?
HBC: Yes, and I was introduced to his Mum, Esther, that night. She’s an amazing woman, I did pretty much base it on her, although ultimately the story couldn’t have been completely faithful to reality. There was a certain amount of privacy we obviously had to respect.
And how did you feel about your screen husband, Eddie Marsan?
HBC: He’s such a good actor, it was very easy working with him, we had a lot of laughs. And he had brown contact lenses in for this, he has very blue eyes, and they completely changed him, these panda-like eyes evoke great sympathy.
When you two are sharing a scene with your screen in-laws, Peter Serafinowicz and Catherine Tate – both known for their comedy work – does it become a raucous affair with you trying not to laugh?
HBC: Well that’s the fantastic thing, Catherine’s very staid actually, very straight. She’s very quiet, probably because she’s doing loads of different things at the same time.
And Peter was so nice, there was a really great group of people. And we did have a laugh. Paul Weiland is very funny, so it was a problem not laughing.
There was one scene that we just could not get through, for some reason. You think it’s hysterical on the day and then you watch it and wonder what on Earth is so funny.
It’s when the doctor and his wife (Stephen Rea and Geraldine Somerville) come to tea, and Eddie’s going on about his war experience, how traumatic it was. It’s when Geraldine asks if he was a pilot and he says he was a cook. She could not get that word out, everyone was corpsing, it was painful.
Your screen son, Gregg Sulkin, has far less experience, but he’s excellent isn’t he?
HBC: He had zero experience but he was really good. The irony is, given the fact that the character can’t play very well, is that he’s actually a brilliant footballer.
He can really do anything but he’s so modest with it. He’s so unaware of all his gifts, but first and foremost he’s got such nice manners and he’s so enthusiastic, a genuinely sweet child who’s been very well brought up.
What of your work had he seen?
HBC: I don’t know, but apparently he was terrified of me. Me of all people! I don’t know what scared him.
It could be a number of things, so diverse have been your roles in recent years?
HBC: My choice is more to do with my character I think, because I do like dressing up and changing and exploring different kinds of characters. And in a way covering myself.
But the thing is ultimately you’re just doing what’s on offer. And what’s good writing. I did this partly because of Paul but also because I loved the script and the story.
Given your early exposure in a succession of fine period films, would you shy away from doing those in the future or are you open to offers?
HBC: I would, but I don’t think I’ll be offered them to be honest. There are millions of other actresses out there and, you know, I’m 40. It’s time for the younger generation to have a go.
You’re certainly busy, what with your son, and an upcoming role in the new Harry Potter film
HBC: And I’ve started a fashion line, Pantaloonies.
Which you were inspired to do when you were pregnant. Has it occurred to you that a lot of good things happened at that time, including your attending that fateful birthday party for Paul Weiland?
HBC: I also did a film called Conversations With Other Women, that was shot in 13 days – I like films that are shot in 13 days. That was fantastic.
The only problem with doing films is that there’s a hell of a lot of waiting. But on that it was act-act-act, and no waiting. That was pretty good.
That’s the problem, often weirdly the tinier the budget the better the writing. And you’re definitely better if the writing’s good. I hope that one gets seen.
But there’s tons of work that you do in your career, or life, which never really gets seen. You get know for certain things, but that’s just five per cent of what you’d done.
But you’re right, there has been a lot happening, and a lot of it is definitely transformed by Billy arriving. I just won’t go off and do anything now.
You would presumably agree, though, that being a parent real changes the way you approach playing a mum like Esther in Sixty Six?
HBC: Undoubtedly, there’s just no inventing the feeling is there? Before the event you’re imagining the feeling, as everyone says. It totally changes your life, it changes your whole perspective on the world. Definitely.
source: The Daily Mail
Carter nabs a killer role
Thesp joining Depp in Burton’s ‘Todd’
by Michael Fleming
Helena Bonham Carter will play the diabolical meat pie-maker Mrs. Lovett in “Sweeney Todd.”
Director Tim Burton tapped Carter to co-star with Johnny Depp in the DreamWorks Studios and Warner Bros. co-production of the Stephen Sondheim musical. John Logan wrote the screenplay.
Mrs. Lovett, a role originated onstage by Angela Lansbury, is a murderess who dispenses her victims’ bodies in meat pies and becomes the amorous accomplice of the Demon Barber of Fleet Street. In most stage productions, Mrs. Lovett has been about a decade older than the Demon Barber and is usually someone in her 50s; Carter and Depp are about the same age and in their early 40s.
Web rumors have “Borat” star Sacha Baron Cohen circling the role of rival barber Signor Adolfo Pirelli, but the studio would not confirm whether he’ll be part of the mix.
Shooting begins in early next year for a late 2007 release, with Paramount distributing domestically for DreamWorks, and Warner Bros. handling international territories.
Carter, Burton’s longtime off-screen partner, has been a regular collaborator onscreen. She has starred in the Burton-directed films “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” “Big Fish” and “Planet of the Apes,” and provided the title voice for “Corpse Bride.”
Carter will sing in “Sweeney Todd.” Sondheim wrote the music and lyrics, while Hugh Wheeler wrote the book for their version of Christopher Bond’s 1973 play. The musical opened in 1979 and won eight Tony Awards including best musical and was revived on Broadway last year after a successful run in London. The legend of Sweeney Todd goes back to the 1800s and was first filmed in 1936 with Tod Slaughter in the title role.
Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald are producing with Richard D. Zanuck and Logan.
Carter just wrapped “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.”
source: Variety.com