Helena Bonham Carter

About Helena Bonham Carter

2008 Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street shared with Conversations with Other Women

Helena Bonham Carter (born May 26, 1966) is an Oscar- and Golden Globe-nominated English actress. She is best known for her portrayals of Lucy Honeychurch in the film A Room with a View, Marla Singer in the film Fight Club, Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, her Oscar-nominated performance as Kate Croy in The Wings of the Dove, her Golden Globe-nominated performance as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, as well as her other collaborations with her domestic partner, Tim Burton. Bonham Carter has recently signed on to star as the leading villain alongside Christian Bale in Terminator Salvation.

Bonham Carter was born in Golders Green, London. Her mother, Elena (née Propper de Callejón), is a psychotherapist. Her father, Raymond Bonham Carter, was a merchant banker and the alternate UK director representing the Bank of England at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. during the 1960s; he came from a famous British political family, being the son of Maurice Bonham Carter and Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury (whose father was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, H. H. Asquith). Bonham Carter's maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón, was of half Spanish and half Jewish ancestry, and served as a diplomat and former Minister-Counsellor at the Spanish Embassy in Washington, D.C. Bonham Carter's Jewish maternal grandmother, Hélène Fould-Springer, was the daughter of Baron Eugène Fould-Springer (a French-born banker who was a cousin of Achille Fould), and Mitzi Springer (whose father was the industrialist Baron Gustav Springer). Hélène Fould-Springer's sister was the French philanthropist Liliane de Rothschild (1916–2003), the wife of Baron Élie de Rothschild, and her other sister, Therese, was the mother of British writer David Pryce-Jones.