Helena Bonham Carter: What The Harry Potter Actress Is Up To Now
Helena Bonham Carter first made a name for herself as the captivating ingénue in 1985's A Room With a View. She's perhaps best known for her work as the thoroughly wicked Bellatrix Lestrange in four Harry Potter films from 2007-2011, and for her 13-year professional and romantic relationship with director Tim Burton. The actress won a BAFTA and was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in 2010's The King's Speech and even received a prestigious Commander of the Order of the British Empire award (CBE) from the Queen of England. The latter was particularly powerful considering she played Queen Elizabeth's mother in that film. Bottom line: This entertainer has made her mark, but what's she up to now?
Bonham Carter is still plenty busy. She's stepping into yet another legendary literary franchise and still dabbling in that royal life, but it's not all work for this powerful woman, who celebrated her 53rd birthday in 2019. She's been having fun with her kids and love is reportedly in the air again! Ready to learn what Bellatrix Lestrange has been up to since Molly Weasley sent her packing permanently? Read on!
Helena Bonham Carter will raise legends in Enola Holmes
There's quite a bit of hush-hush about Enola Holmes. Starring Stranger Things star Millie Bobby Brown (above) in the title role, the adaptation is based on author Nancy Springer's Edgar Award-nominated YA detective books, An Enola Holmes Mystery Series. Helena Bonham Carter plays Eudoria, the mother of teenage Enola and of her much older brothers, Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes.
This could be the start of a long-running gig for Bonham Carter, since there are six books in the series. Depending on the success of this first film — slated for release in 2020 — we could see many more adventures for Enola Holmes and family on the silver screen. According to Variety, Killing Eve director Harry Bradbeer is in the driver's seat, with Jack Thorne penning the screenplay. Also attached to the project are actors Sam Clafin, Bonham Carter's fellow Harry Potter alum Fiona Shaw, and Adeel Akhtar.
Helena Bonham Carter will become royalty on The Crown
In July 2018, Netflix revealed that Helena Bonham Carter would play Queen Elizabeth's star-crossed sister Princess Margaret in Season 3 of The Crown, which sees Oscar-winner Olivia Colman take over for Claire Foy in the lead role. Bonham Carter has expressed trepidation about the role: "I'm not sure which I'm more terrified about –- doing justice to the real Princess Margaret or following in the shoes of Vanessa Kirby. The only thing I can guarantee is that I'll be shorter than Vanessa."
Season 3 will likely cover the late 1960s to the late 1970s, so we'll probably get to see Bonham Carter's character deal with Margaret's scandal-plagued divorce from Lord Snowdon in 1978. According to Radio Times, co-star Tobias Menzies suggested a November 2019 debut on Netflix, and in a post-Oscars interview in February 2019, Colman revealed that shooting for Season 4 picked up in August 2019.
You won't recognize Helena Bonham Carter in her Dark Crystal prequel role
Netflix will host a double dose of Helena Bonham Carter in August 2019 thanks to her (voice) role as All-Maudra (pictured above), the matriarch leader of the Gelfling clans in The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. The puppetry series serves as a prequel to Jim Henson's 1982 adventure film The Dark Crystal, which The New York Times astutely observed features "no human beings" (except for the voices.) What's the skinny on Bonham Carter's character? According to Newsweek, "Gelfling society is divided into seven clans, each led by a Maudra. The All-Maudra speaks for the seven clans in Gelfling negotiations with the Castle of The Crystal." Well, that hopefully makes everything clear!
Vanity Fair noted that the all-star cast includes Lena Headey (Game of Thrones), Sigourney Weaver (Avatar), Awkwafina (Ocean's Eight), Benedict Wong (Avengers: Endgame) and Hannah John-Kamen (Ant-Man and the Wasp). "I am so grateful to this dedicated and gifted ensemble who has so beautifully voiced the characters performed by our puppeteers," said director and executive producer Louis Leterrier in The Hollywood Reporter. He added, "Gathering such highly skilled performers was only possible because of their love and respect for Jim Henson's work and his ongoing legacy."
Helena Bonham Carter will raise her voice for BBC's Children in Need
Helena Bonham Carter and her The Crown co-star Olivia Colman are also among those (including Doctor Who's Jodie Whittaker; former Time Lord David Tennant; Oscar winner Jim Broadbent; Gentleman Jack's Suranne Jones and more) lending their talents to an album and documentary (according to Radio Times) for the BBC's Children in Need charity in the UK.
"Many of the actors have said trying to nail the role of recording artist has been their most challenging role yet," Mel Balac, BBC Studios' Creative Director, told Radio Times. "The personally curated playlist that is being created in aid of Pudsey will be big on musical surprises and laughs, while highlighting the fantastic charities and causes BBC Children in Need supports. Bring on the drama!" The album will be released in conjunction with Silva Screen Records in late 2019, with all profits going to Children in Need. The documentary Children in Need: Get it Covered will broadcast on BBC One ahead of the annual Children in Need appeal TV show that usually airs in November.
Helena Bonham Carter plans to visit The Land of Sometimes
Helena Bonham Carter is reportedly also providing her vocals to an animated film of the smash UK children's audio book The Land of Sometimes, created by composer/lyricist Francesca Longrigg. That film gestated in pre-production for a while but will reportedly be finished by Christmas 2019.
Bonham Carter voices a character with the impishly memorable name of "Little Twink," a "naughty fairy," who is known in the series for stirring up trouble thanks to her habit of dancing and creating messes in the bedrooms of little boys and girls. Also involved (per Screen Daily) are Ewan McGregor, Little Britain's David Walliams, and Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, who recorded his character's voice in 2016. Sadly, the role could be Jones' last vocal performance, as his fellow Python, Terry Gilliam, revealed to the Daily Star Sunday (via The Mirror) in June 2019 that Jones' dementia has tragically robbed Jones of his ability to speak.
55 Steps was a personal odyssey for Helena Bonham Carter
Helena Bonham Carter apparently isn't the nostalgic type. When she was awarded a fellowship by the British Film Institute in 2012, she said she follows her father's advice to just "KBO" (keep buggering on), per The Telegraph. However, the struggles this actress faced to make 2018's 55 Steps will probably stay with her for a very long time. "It's a miracle this film got made," Bonham Carter told The Guardian. "It's fallen apart so many times."
The movie tells the story of Eleanor Riese (Bonham Carter), a California psychiatric patient who successfully fought in the 1980s for the legal right to refuse antipsychotic drugs. "It was like I was carrying the baton for Eleanor," the actress said. In a Red Carpet News TV interview at the premiere, Bonham Carter said she was originally slated to play the role of patients rights attorney Colette Hughewent, but the part ultimately went to Hillary Swank (above right).
This project was personal for Bonham Carter. According to The Guardian, her father, Raymond, suffered a stroke that "left him paralyzed and cortically blind," following a procedure to remove a growth on his brain. Bonham Carter was 13 at the time. As filming for 55 Steps finally wrapped, Bonham Carter realized how deeply she'd connected to the material. "I thought: 'Of course I'm doing this film because of my flipping father,'" she said, "because he also had a medical intervention on the brain that went wrong."
Helena Bonham Carter believes in the #MeToo movement
Helena Bonham Carter is an advocate for the ideals of the #MeToo movement. Speaking with The Guardian in October 2018, she told the outlet about standing up to Harvey Weinstein earlier in her career when the producer allegedly made unwanted advances towards her. How did she manage to do that? "Because I already had a career," she said, adding, "Other people were employing me. I wasn't reliant on him.
"It is definitely a good thing that #MeToo has happened," she also told the newspaper. "Any kind of abuse is not on. But I think one has to be careful. You have to be absolutely rigorous about what somebody has done to stand up and accuse them." Bonham Carter was also front-and-center at Care International's March4Women in London in 2019, where she stressed the importance of showing "solidarity with women and girls" who are "vulnerable to exploration and abuse." She added, "Sexual harassment isn't in anyone's job description."
But she also worked with accused workplace harasser Jeffrey Tambor on 55 Steps ("He has such compassion, and I don't believe that same heart would be capable of any kind of abuse," she told The Guardian). She also said allegations about Johnny Depp from his former wife Amber Heard haven't impacted her relationship with him: "No. Johnny is still a friend. He's the godfather to my children. I haven't seen him for a long time. But he's quite an elusive character." Hmm...
Who is Helena Bonham Carter's beau?
Helena Bonham Carter and Tim Burton split quietly sometime prior to confirming the news in December 2014. in The new man in Helena Bonham Carter's life is 32-year-old Rye Dag Holmboe, according to the Daily Mail. He's been a writer and a PhD that teaches modern and contemporary art and literature courses in the History of Art department at University College, London. They reportedly met last October at a mutual friend's wedding and have been spotted from London's Primrose Hill to the streets of NYC since, the Daily Mail noted.
Bonham Carter's romance with Holmboe coincidentally dovetails with similar liaisons between other so-called "art boys" and female celebs, according to Vanity Fair. Neither Bonham Carter nor Holmboe are mentioned in the piece, but the outlet opined, "The Art Boy is a regular guy with a twist, sometimes carrying with him an undercurrent of cultivated danger." Sounds fun! (Even if it may or may not accurately describe Holmboe.) It's unclear what the couple likes to discuss regarding art, but Bonham Carter did narrate a documentary that charts the life of 16th Century Venetian painter Tintoretto, so there's that for a start.
Helena Bonham Carter is busy being a mom
Helena Bonham Carter may have split from director Tim Burton in 2014 after 13 years together (she later told Harper's Bazaar UK, "I wanted to put 'handle with care' tape on my forehead when Tim and I split"), but like many exes the world over they still share parenting duties. What's not so typical is that the two former partners live next door to each other: "We have a weird living arrangement, which now suits us fine," Helena told the magazine. "It's really good because it hasn't caused much change for the children, which is our top priority. We still operate as a family."
She may have scared children (and adults, too) the world over as the evil Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter franchise, but to Billy, 15, and Nell, 11, she's just mum with her own eccentric sense of fashion. And perhaps not surprisingly, public jaunts with the kids include a movie now and then.