2001

From Playboy (USA):

INTERVIEW WITH HELENA BONHAM CARTER

When Planet of the Apes star Helena Bonham Carter -- the great-great granddaughter of liberal British Prime Minister H.H. Asquith -- was 15, a classmate at London's upper-crust Westminster School landed a role on a commercial. Fueled by adolescent envy, Carter marched over to the nearest talent agency and got signed, cinching her first starring role only a few years later as the doomed-to-be-beheaded Lady Jane Grey.

Carter's milky skin, doe-eyes and willful character made her a shoo-in for a string of small costume dramas and, in no time at all, the ingenue had become the poster child for period pieces. Directing-producing team Merchant and Ivory cast her in a series of successful E.M. Forster film adaptations, from A Room With a View to Howards End, and Carter became cinema's reigning parasol princess.

It wasn't long, however, before Carter sought change, abandoning her corsets and lace for a role as a philandering New York art dealer in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite and a five-year live-in love affair with fellow Brit Kenneth Branagh. In 1999, the chain-smoking actress shook good-girl typecasting forever by playing the emotionally unstable spitfire who finds schizophrenic romance in David Fincher's Fight Club. Here, Carter caught the eye of Edward Scissorhands director Tim Burton, who cast her in his remake of Planet of the Apes. Under layers of makeup and monkey hair, Carter plays the sympathetic chimpanzee Ari, whose soft spot for Mark Wahlberg's stranded astronaut fuels the fires of a human race rebellion. Carter talks to Playboy.com about monkey love and her evolution from the parlors of Edwardian England to the dusty battlefields of a simian-ruled future.

Playboy.com: In a way, this role in Planet of the Apes is just a continuation of your career in period pieces. It just happens to be the future rather than the past and you're wearing chimp feet instead of hoop skirts.

Helena Bonham Carter: Exactly. It really was similar in some ways. Tim [Burton] actually said that I was a character actress inside the veneer of a costume-drama queen, and it's true; there was a chimp waiting to blossom inside me. I became a monkey for a big chunk of the past year. I had to learn to move like a monkey. I had to wear that mask until I nearly forgot what I really looked like. Whenever you saw people without their masks on it was actually shocking. You came to know them as these monkeys, and when you saw them as people there was this moment where you were like, "What?" But really, it wasn't all that different. In terms of the story, it's like you said, not that different at all. I'm the romantic lead, which is similar to the roles I've done in the past.

PB: You're the romantic lead, except you're a monkey. There's no actual consummation to the romance with Mark Wahlberg.

HBC: No, we keep it clean, but there is a sweet chemistry between Mark's character and mine. I'm also the straight girl, which is kind of difficult when you've got a chimp's head on. Let's just say it's hard to be earnest about saving the human race when you look like a monkey.

PB: You've come a long way from the Merchant-Ivory costume dramas. Did you deliberately take roles like Fight Club and Planet of the Apes to dispel the image you might have been developing, of the pale girl in petticoats?

HBC: No, not really, but I am attracted to doing things that are different, things that would be fun for me. I actually feel I've been really lucky with all the roles I've had. Most of the Merchant-Ivory films were based on books, which is great because you automatically have a really solid story and really solid development of a character. Plus, I love wearing beautiful dresses, getting transformed like that. I would do it again in a minute.

PB: Besides good costumes, what makes you decide to take on a role?

HBC: Character. It's always the same thing: a well-written, three-dimensional character. Humor is a huge thing for me as well. Obviously the director, because you can have the most marvelous script and if it lands in the improper hands it can just not work or take off in the right way.

PB: I imagine it's nearly impossible to know how things are going to turn out. There are so many variables.

HBC: Exactly. Right from the start, all the way through to the end, there are variables. You can have a great little movie or something that's fulfilled all its promises, and yet has not had the right marketing and then it fails miserably. Or the music doesn't work. If one ingredient fails, the whole thing can collapse. It's like making a massive cake. And it's a very expensive cake, too. You just cross your fingers and hope that it rises. One director told me that doing production is like getting a fat elephant to dance.

PB: What are your plans now?

HBC: I've done three pictures back to back [Apes, the Steve Martin dental comedy Novocaine and Till Human Voices Wake Us with Memento star Guy Pearce]. I don't feel a massive urgency to do anything for a bit, but I don't really know yet. I haven't been back to England for a year now. So, I plan on doing a bit of living...a bit of living without my ape head on.