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Top 10 Helena Bonham Carter

Throwing off the shackles of period drama, Helena Bonham Carter has since become wife and muse to Tim Burton and is now more commonly seen playing dangerous and demented women (see Harry Potter and Sweeney Todd). We chart this transition from pale English rose to paler villain via character-forming turns in Frankenstein and Fight Club. Our top 10 follows...

Her Top 10 Films

A Room with a View (1985)

Fresh from the television show A Pattern Of Roses, Helena Bonham Carter stepped into her first movie role at the tender age of 19, the film adaptation of E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View. Donning a tight corset and stiff upper lip to match, Bonham Carter gives a sturdy performance opposite heavyweight actor Daniel Day-Lewis as the young Miss Lucy Honeychurch. The film, directed by James Ivory, was nominated for eight Oscars, three of which it won.

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Howards End (1992)

Fast-forward through seven years and several television projects to arrive at one of the most defining moments in Bonham Carter’s career – an Academy Award-nominated performance in the period drama Howards End. Returning to the prim and proper world of petticoats in another adaptation of an E.M. Forster novel, the Brit actress was in esteemed company – Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave and Emma Thompson co-starring.

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Frankenstein (1994)

A couple of years later, Bonham Carter teamed up with Emma Thompson’s then-husband, Kenneth Branagh, plus Robert De Niro, to bring to life this big-screen version of the classic horror. Rumour has it that electricity between Branagh and Bonham-Carter sparked Thompson to file for divorce, but such hearsay didn’t harm the film’s reception, as it scooped Oscar and BAFTA nominations. It made a meager profit, but received more – though not universal – approval from critics.

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Mighty Aphrodite (1995)

A decade after making a name for herself in A Room with a View, Bonham Carter was snapped up by director Woody Allen to play Amanda in the Oscar-winning comedy, Mighty Aphrodite. Allen is said to have originally envisioned Mia Farrow or Susan Sarandon in the role, but Bonham Carter made the cut. The film barely hit half of its original budget at the US box-office, but inadequate takings didn’t deter the rave reviews which followed.

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The Wings of the Dove (1997)

Bonham Carter lost out to a blubbery Gwyneth Paltrow for Best Actress at the Academy Awards, nominated for her turn in this period drama set at the turn of the 20th Century. Based on the 1902 novel of the same name by Henry James, and having been previously adapted for the silver-screen, critics lauded this rendition – and Bonham Carter’s performance – as superior to other versions of the book.

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Fight Club (1999)

After years playing the period part, Bonham Carter stepped into the Oscar-nominated Fight Club. With smudged eyeliner, back-combed hair and a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, the actress climbed aboard this racy, feisty film (and aboard Brad Pitt and Edward Norton) with full-on brass and sass. Courtney Love, Winona Ryder and Reese Witherspoon were all considered for the role of Marla Singer, but the Brit actress beat them to the punch.

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Planet of the Apes (2001)

Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel is recognised worldwide, and the franchise consists of comic-books, a television show and two films – the famous original, starring Charlton Heston, and this more recent version. Famed for uniting director Tim Burton and Bonham Carter on and off the screen, Planet Of The Apes sees the actress sporting a monkey mask as Mark Wahlberg’s primate love interest. The film was a financial success, but failed to win over the critics.

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Alice in Wonderland (2010)

Bonham Carter’s sixth appearance in a Burton film, she plays the tyrannical Red Queen (actually based on both the Queen of Hearts, featured in Lewis Carroll’s original novel, and the Red Queen, who appears in the sequel). The actress apparently found her inspiration in the form of toddler daughter Nell, who, like all good toddlers, showed a tendency towards bossiness. The effect is intensified by Bonham Carter’s head being digitally enhanced to three times its proper size.

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The King’s Speech (2011)

Production had to fit around Bonham Carter’s schedule on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but the actress proved worth waiting for. Bonham Carter plays a very different sort of queen to her role in Alice…, delivering such a strong performance as the wife of King George VI (Colin Firth) that it saw her nominated for an Oscar. The movie itself received twelve nominations in total, proving a huge hit both at the box office and with the critics.

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Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007)

Not the first film to see Bonham Carter team up with Burton and his muse, Johnny Depp, and it probably won’t be the last, either. The performers polished their singing talents for this film adaptation of the Tony award-winning 1979 musical, by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler. And it’s rumoured that, in addition to vocal training, the actress honed her baking skills with cooking classes to prepare for the role too.

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Jennifer Trevorrow