October 21, 2005

From mirror.co.uk

GONE FOR A BURTON

by John Hiscock

AFTER YEARS OF TURMOIL IN HER PRIVATE LIFE, HELENA BONHAM CARTER IS HAPPY WITH DIRECTOR TIM BURTON.

Whenever Helena Bonham Carter wants to sit in the garden or play with her baby son Billy Ray, she pops next door to her boyfriend Tim Burton’s house. And when Tim fancies a cup of tea or a bite to eat, he goes next door to use the kitchen in Helena’s house.

“I don’t know why people think it’s strange,” says the petite English actress of their bizarre living arrangements. “We’re actually quite normal. We have the ideal set up. We can visit each other when we want and have our privacy, too.”

Today sees the release of Tim’s new film Corpse Bride, a gothic animation, with Helena voicing the lead character in an impressive cast including Johnny Depp, Albert Finney, Jane Horrocks and Paul Whitehouse. Tim and Helena have been together since 2001 when they met on a previous collaboration in Planet Of The Apes.

The director, whose films include Batman, The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, dumped his long-time fiancée, the actress Lisa Marie, to move to London to be with Bonham Carter. A couple of years ago she gave birth to their son. Helena, 39, then moved out of her Hampstead home and she and Tim, 47, bought houses next door to each other in nearby Belsize Park and built a corridor between them.

“My house is tasteful with a French country style to it,” laughs Helena. “But you go over to his house and, without any warning, you’re in a totally different land. It’s like going from the land of the living to the land of the dead. He has got skeletons, weird things and lots of strange alien-like lamps in different colours. They’re not huge houses, but his has certainly got a great garden.”

They both have their own bedrooms, although she goes over to Tim’s house at night to sleep with him. In the morning they go back to Helena’s for breakfast. Advertisement

“We kept the bedrooms because I always want to have my own too,” she adds. “And we also kept the kitchen in his house, even though we don’t use it, because you never know when you might need another one.”

During the day, Billy – who has just turned two – spends his time in his father’s house, where Helena has a workroom in which she makes toys and knits. “Tim gave me one of the rooms in his house because my place is so small,” she explains.

Helena and Tim’s lives centre around baby Billy who, she says, they have nicknamed the Terrycloth Terror in honour of the dressing gown he wears. “Billy brings out my own childhood in me, but I also feel a new responsibility,” Helena admits. “The sheer unconditional love I feel for him is lovely. He’s so funny and entertaining. I didn’t know kids could be so eccentric. They’re all so honest and true to themselves without any affections and it has completely changed me. It’s basically such a relief when you discover that you’re not the most important thing anymore.

“Tim is so in love with Billy and it’s so sweet the way he completely lightens up and lets the child do anything with him. Billy is probably soon going to overtake Tim in mental age. It’s really enchanting. It’s such a nice life and we have fun. Tim is a great find and I feel really lucky.”

Helena has not always been so happy. For a long time, gossip and rumour dogged her private life. It began when she and Kenneth Branagh became lovers after they worked together on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1994, which Branagh directed. At the time, he was married to Emma Thompson, but left her the following year for Bonham Carter.

Helena and Branagh remained together until 1999, although for much of that time Helena continued to live with her parents. Then, when she became involved with Tim Burton, his girlfriend, Lisa Marie, was said to be distraught and furious. But Helena has always insisted that she and Burton began their affair after he broke up with Marie.

Now things are much more stable and motherhood means that Helena is cutting down on her film work to stay at home.

“I’ve worked pretty much non-stop for 20 years,” she says. “Now, with a baby, the family, the house and my craft room, I feel my career doesn’t have to go on endlessly. I can still work a little bit every year, but I want to have more of a rich life. It has so much more to offer than just being on a film set every day.”

The great-grandaughter of British Prime Minster Herbert Asquith – and with several life peers and a baroness in her family tree – Helena made her name playing aristocratic characters. She had her first leading role at the age of 17 in Lady Jane and was typecast as a classic English rose because of her early roles in period dramas such as Howards End and A Room With A View. She even joked that she should “have a couple of ribs removed because I’ll be in corsets for the rest of my life”. But after restyling her hair and going nude in The Wings Of The Dove, Helena totally reinvented her image.

In 1999, she played Marla Singer, a chain-smoking, sexily neurotic punk who had steamy love scenes with Brad Pitt in Fight Club. Helena astonished critics that she could play a tough girl so convincingly.

She then spent the whole of Planet Of The Apes in a latex suit playing a female ape. Co-star Donnie Wahlberg later confessed, “I was very attracted to her and I wasn’t the only one.”

While enjoying motherhood, Helena has managed to find the time to provide the voices both for Corpse Bride – which reunites her with Burton for the third time – and Lady Tottington in the current blockbuster Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of The Were-Rabbit.

“Tim’s a good person to work for and it means I get to see him,” she smiles. “It’s nice to be a part of something he’s working on because then I know what he’s up to.

“The only painful bit is when he cuts my scenes. I thought I had a nice laugh in Corpse Bride which I used all through the film, but he cut it out! He went for a softer, less interesting laugh instead.

“On set, I have to agree with him and do exactly what he says, but at home it’s different. There he does exactly what I say.”