Helena Bonham Carter

She has now been confirmed to be taking on the role of Miss Havisham in Mike Newell's adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, Great Expectations. Read Less

She cites Vivienne Westwood and Marie Antoinette as her main style influences. Read Less

Bonham Carter was born in Golders Green, London. Her mother, Elena (née Propper de Callejón), is a psychotherapist. Her father, Raymond Bonham Carter, who came from a prominent British political family, was a merchant banker and served as the alternative British director representing the Bank of England at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s.

Bonham Carter has two brothers, Edward and Thomas. She was educated at South Hampstead High School, an independent girls' school in Hampstead, London, and later at Westminster School, a co-educational independent school near the Palace of Westminster. Bonham Carter was denied admission to King's College, Cambridge, not because of her grades and her test scores but because school officials were afraid that she would leave mid-term to pursue her acting career.

When Bonham Carter was five, her mother had a serious nervous breakdown, from which it took her three years to recover. Upon her recovery, her experience in therapy led her to become a psychotherapist herself – Bonham Carter now pays her to read her scripts and deliver her opinion of the characters' psychological motivations. Five years after her mother's recovery, her father was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma. He suffered complications during an operation to remove the tumour which led to a stroke that left him half-paralysed and using a wheelchair. With her two older brothers at college, Bonham Carter was left to help her mother cope. Read Less

She denied that David Cameron was right wing, saying he was 'not a right-wing person'.

Helena Bonham Carter's paternal grandparents were British Liberal politician Sir Maurice Bonham Carter and renowned politician and orator Violet Bonham Carter. Helena's paternal great-grandfather was Herbert Henry Asquith, 1st Earl of Oxford and Asquith, Prime Minister of Britain from 1908–1916. She is the grand-niece of Asquith's son, Anthony Asquith, legendary English director of such classics as Carrington V.C. and The Importance of Being Earnest. Helena Bonham Carter is a distant cousin of fellow actor Crispin Bonham-Carter, who played Mr. Bingley in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, and politician Jane Bonham Carter. Other prominent distant relatives include Lothian Bonham Carter, who played first-class cricket for Hampshire, and his son, Vice Admiral Stuart Bonham Carter, who served in the Royal Navy in both of the 20th century's world wars. Read Less