Helena Bonham Carter, the rebellious actress who is not cut when talking about Johnny Depp, JK Rowling and Harvey Weinstein

Helena Bonham Carter (London, 56 years old) is synonymous with period cinema, although the most remembered phrase of her career is the one she blurts out at Tyler Durden in Fight

“I want an abortion from you”

The actress is not part of the front page of Hollywood, but her face is recognizable by several generations of viewers.

At a time when artists measure each of her gestures so as not to harm her career, she has never given up being herself and expressing her opinions.

And she has an opinion on almost everything.

From her film debut with the ultra-British tandem Merchant Ivory to her role as the mother of

, whose second part has just been released on Netflix, has touched all genres and combined film and television with ease.

She has also seen how her private life was analyzed in the yellow press and his style, the object of recurring ridicule.

“A charcoal-drawn Victorian Gothic,” defined it by

And a woman without fear of controversy.

She would say that she is fearless, in general.

In 2023 she will premiere the new miniseries by Russell T. Davies (

) and a movie with Anthony Hopkins (

).

A few weeks ago, some of his statements defending two friends who have suffered to a greater or lesser extent from the so-called cancellation culture (a term, cancellation, as resounding as it is doubtful, since most of its supposed victims continue to work normally) have provided a few headlines.

To the Sunday edition of

he declared: "Everything has turned hysterical, there is a kind of witch hunt."

Her words have had much more impact than the reason for the interview: nothing less than having become the first woman to chair the National Library of London in her 181-year history.

A trifle, it seems, compared to her views on Johnny Depp, a close friend, partner in five movies, and godfather to the two children she had with director Tim Burton.

Depp has been "completely acquitted", he said, referring to the actor's victory in the ultra-high-profile defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard.

The newspaper also wanted to know his opinion regarding the controversy over the alleged transphobia of which the writer JK Rowling has been accused for a few years.

Carter blames Twitter: "Nobody can talk about ideas there, everything is polarized, it's the war," and adds another possible cause of the attempt to oust the writer: "If it hadn't been for her immense success, the reaction wouldn't be so disproportionate.

There is a lot of envy and the need to tear down successful people.

He apologizes, however, that the youngest actors in the saga did not position themselves in favor of the author that allowed them to become stars.

“Personally, I think they should let her have her opinions,

James Ivory and Helena Bonham Carter in a portrait in the late eighties.

The director-producer gave him his first big break with "A Room with a View."Lynn Goldsmith (Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)

Controversial men from A to Z

Bonham Carter's career now spans four decades.

He has worked with Woody Allen, Mel Gibson, Roman Polanski, Jeffrey Tambor and Harvey Weinstein, all of them protagonists of scandals of more or less intensity.

“I never see anything in black and white.

I think that people are multicolored, it is almost never a question of being the good guy or the bad guy.

Weinstein was a bully, period.

But not a full stop, really.

He was a bully, a potential sociopath, and also a fantastically effective movie producer,” he states.

The actress does not hide how important Weinstein was to her career.

“He was very smart.

There are many reasons why he was very powerful.

He knew how to get you Oscar nominations.

My two nominations are due to him.

And he had great taste in movies."

In the

saga, where she played the villain Bellatrix Lestrange, one of the fan-favorite characters (and which was not intended for her, but for the recently deceased Helen McCrory) coincided with Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.

It was not the first time that they crossed paths: the three of them were protagonists of a love triangle that obsessed the British press in 1995 (Brannagh broke off her relationship with Thompson to start one with Bonham Carter) and resurfaces every time Christmas puts on the grills

Thompson has declared more than once that in the sequence in which she breaks down after discovering that her husband is unfaithful, she owes a lot to the pain she felt after learning about Branagh's relationship with Bonham Carter.

Helena Bonham Carter and Kenneth Branagh in Los Angeles in 1998.Ron Galella Ltd (Ron Galella Collection via Getty)

The romance with the British filmmaker lasted five years and shares some points with his next great love story.

While filming the 1999 version of

, she fell in love with director Tim Burton.

"When we first met, even though he put me in a chimpanzee suit, I was well aware that he liked my face: dark, pale, tuberculous."

At that time Burton was engaged to the actress Lisa Marie, also present in the film.

History repeated itself.

Unlike what happened with Branagh, a relationship that never quite fit the public mindset, hers with Burton seemed made in heaven.

Or in hell.

The shabby style of both became a delight for the magazines.

“They saw us as the crazy couple.”

Her highly personal fashion sense has made her a regular on worst-dressed lists and a prime target for the fashion police who oversee red carpets.

In 2011, the Vivienne Westwood of hers in a one-of-a-kind shoe of each color was the talk of analysts, but Carter was undaunted.

“Why can't you wear mismatched shoes?

Who says we can't?"

“Sometimes I get it right and sometimes I get it wrong,” she admitted.

“But fashion is about having fun.

Fashion has been hijacked by an industry that makes rules about what we can and can't wear and I feel like breaking them."

Her attitude was rewarded when she became the image of Marc Jacobs.

Burton and Bonham Carter made eight movies together, “but I never had a free hand because I slept with him, I had to audition.

And that I gave him two children!

In 2014 they announced their separation.

Helena Bonham Carter and Harvey Weinstein at a screening of 'The King's Speech' in London in 2010. Jon Furniss (WireImage)

The actress believes that the scrutiny to which her relationships were subjected by the press is one of the reasons why Peter Morgan, the creator of

, he asked her to play the unpredictable and hapless Princess Margaret (a character that Vanessa Kirby made the most fascinating of the series in the first two seasons).

Perhaps it also influenced the fact that few other actresses have rubbed shoulders with the real Margarita.

Her uncle Mark Bonham-Carter was the princess's boyfriend.

Although the actress tends to downplay her ancestry, she is the great-granddaughter of Herbert Henry Asquith, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between 1908 and 1916, and there are quite a few aristocrats in her family tree.

She prefers to talk about her Jewish roots and her mother, psychotherapist Elena Propper de Callejón, daughter of Eduardo Propper de Callejón, a Spanish diplomat who helped hundreds of Jews flee occupied France during World War II. .

"Everyone thinks I'm posh because I have three names," she lamented in

.

A not so perfect childhood

She grew up in north London surrounded by privilege, but there are matters they don't understand about money.

When she was five years old, her mother suffered a nervous breakdown that lasted for three years.

At thirteen, her father was paralyzed after an operation.

Dedicating himself to acting was an escape route.

Her film debut was through the big door, alongside Maggie Smith, Daniel Day-Lewis and Judi Dench and directed by James Ivory.

(1989) won three Oscars and she put her face on the map.

“The true star of the film is the gorgeous Helena Bonham Carter, who gives an extraordinarily complex performance as a young woman who plunges headlong into the unknown,” said

.

After her first and only Oscar nomination for Best Leading Actress for

(1997, she has another secondary for

2011) she received a barrage of offers, but there was a surprising one.

At Brad Pitt's suggestion, David Fincher sent him the script for

(1999).

“She was perfect: she was a non-stop smoker and she's an exquisite, caustic, funny neurotic,” Fincher stated.

Despite being considered one of the best films by a visionary director today, it was panned by critics and booed at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival at the time.

“Fincher was depressed by such a violent reaction, but my mother, who had accompanied me to the festival, clapped her hands and said: 'Don't worry, it's going to be a cult film.'

He was right.

Rye Dag Holmboe and Helena Bonham Carter pose for the press at the Virgin Media British Academy Television Awards in London in 2021. David M. Benett (Dave Benett/Getty Images)

More than two decades later, he confesses that he did not understand the role, nor the film, which did not prevent his work from being impeccable.

In his acting method there is a lot of research, but also unconventional methods.

To interpret Princess Margarita, in addition to reading all her biographies and contacting an astrologer and a graphologist, she spoke with a medium.

“She told him that she was glad she was me because she was better than other actresses she was considering.

The main thing when you play someone who is real is to have her blessing because you have a responsibility,” she explained in

.

She had already turned to parapsychology to get into the skin of Elizabeth Taylor in

(2013).

“A friend of mine is a medium.

We contacted him because we have had some problems with ghosts in the house, ”he declared in 2013 to

.

"I told him that he was in a real dilemma about the role and he brought me answers."

His methods are unusual, but effective.

His career is solid and not complacent, he has moved easily between genres and has earned the respect of more than one generation.

His sentimental life also seems calm.

For four years she has been in a relationship with Rye Dag Holmboe, an art historian who, as the tabloids repeatedly point out, is a couple of decades younger.

The issue of age does not seem too traumatic for an actress for whom the number of roles has never declined and she has known how to adapt to the times without giving up being herself: she has spoken out against aesthetic operations and talked openly about processes that are often taboo like when he compared his children's puberty to his menopause: "Basically, we're going crazy at the same time."

That the press has turned her age difference with her partner into a topic of interest does not bother her.

What's more, take the opportunity to thank men who are capable of appreciating different types of beauty.

“Collagen is not the only form of sensuality;

there is character, fun, mischief and humor.

As long as you have the laugh, the intimacy will be there."

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