After years of heading up the corset and crumpet club, Helena Bonham Carter is stepping into two new contemporary films--_The Theory of Flight_ with Kenneth Branagh and The Fight Club with Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. And although she instinctively shrinks from the sun, she's warming up to life in Hollywood.
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If you've been anywhere near a period film in the last 15 years, then of course you've seen Helena Bonham Carter. She's the feisty girl with the spectacular auburn hair that cascades down her back, the one with the soulful eyes, the singular pout and the narrow waist, the one who can drive men so wild with desire that they will risk everything--honor, country, family--to be with her.
So who's this waif in sneakers and a baggy dress walking towards me at L.A.'s Four Seasons poolside restaurant? With her whiter-than-a-Kabuki-mask skin, her dark kohled eyes and her short spiky hair, Helena Bonham Carter looks like no one out of any century earlier than the 21st. "Sorry," she says when she notes my reaction, "I know people are always disappointed when they meet me." Before I can assure her that I'm not exactly disappointed, she waves away my concerns. "I know what they're thinking--'She
doesn't dress great, she's British but she's not at all classy, and her hair ... it's a mess!'"
With that, Bonham Carter heads straight to the one shady table around the pool and collapses into her chair, pulling her legs up and covering as much of her pale flesh as possible with the yards of material that make up her dress. Obviously she's not visiting L.A. from her native London to take in the sunshine. In fact, she's here to make The Fight Club, director David Fincher's high-profile contemporary film that stars Brad Pitt and Edward Norton. She's also busy promoting The Theory of Flight, yet another contemporary story, which costars Kenneth Branagh, who happens to be her boyfriend.
Bonham Carter built a career on being the corset queen of period dramas. She delivered subtle, beautiful performances in Lady Jane, A Room with a View, Maurice and Howards End. Finally, with last year's The Wings of a Dove, Hollywood gave her an Oscar nomination. And now, for the first time in a long time, she's getting to play roles in which her waist isn't cinched.
"I think I single-handedly brought back the corset," she tells me. "And the thing of it is, I'm a woman who doesn't even wear earrings! I like to be comfortable, because I'm so primped all the time on sets. I buy lots of clothes, but I never even wear them. They just look great in my closet."
I could believe Bonham Carter if I hadn't seen her at last year's Academy Awards ceremony, where she was simply a knockout in a lavender satin gown. Bonham Carter smiles at the memory. "The amount of palaver about what you're going to wear at the Oscars is just absurd," she declares, not having any idea I'll have to look up the definition of "palaver" later (it means "idle chatter"). "I've never really cared that much about the clothing. And then suddenly it was my number one priority. I remember being in a cold sweat on my bed, wondering what the fuck I was going to wear. And the designers were throwing dresses at me. Of course, me being me, I didn't go for a free one. I finally realized that what I wanted to wear was this dress that my mum had in the attic. I had always loved it, but it didn't fit right, so I went to this wonderful woman, Deborah Milner, and she remade it. Then I went to see a man named Mr. Powell, who makes corsets. I think he thought this was the luckiest day of his life, because he's so period-mad, and here I was. He wanted me to go really tiny--I mean, they can make your waist whatever size you dream because they'll just cinch it tighter and tighter. This guy has an 18-inch waist, he's worn his corset now for 20 years, only taking it off for baths, and ..."
Bonham Carter suddenly sees that I am staring at her in astonishment. "He's a body engineer," she says, as if that explains everything. "Anyway, he made this couture corset for me that is so comfortable."
We now know more about corsets than we ever wanted to, but there is no stopping Bonham Carter. "The only bad part is, when can I wear that dress again? Do you think I could wear it if I'm ever nominated again?
Nobody ever does that, right? I felt like the whole night was some massive wedding. It's like everyone you knew was about to be married. And everybody was wishing you luck and joy. You're all dressed for it, but the groom's a nine-inch gold statue, who might very well stand you up at the last minute."
"Did you feel like a jilted bride when you lost the Oscar?"
Bonham Carter laughs. "I swear, when they announced Helen Hunt's name, I thought I had won! They said Helen, and I started to get out of my seat. But I was there with my mum and she put her arm on me and said, 'No.' And then I realized it was Helen not Helena. And I felt this rush of emotion--I just wanted to cry, not even because I was disappointed, but because it was such a relief that it was all over. Then I thought, 'Oh no, I've got to think up my loser sound bite now.' You do have to have a sense of humor."
Bonham Carter looks up and realizes the sun is starting to edge toward her part of the table. "Do you mind if we switch seats?" she asks. I don't, so we both get up.
"Why was your mom sitting next to you at the Oscars and not Kenneth Branagh?" I ask. After all, they have been dating for three years. "The press in England is horrid to us," Bonham Carter says sadly. "They never stop clamoring on. So we are very careful not to go to big things together, like the Oscars or something of that nature." Bonham Carter and Branagh fell in love while they were making Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, though at the time Branagh was married to Emma Thompson. It's never been clear whether Branagh's affair with Bonham Carter broke up their marriage, or whether Thompson left him before the affair started, but the British press apparently won't leave it alone one way or the other.
"I once saw an article where you said you wouldn't work with Ken again," I say, which, given the disaster Mary Shelley's Frankenstein turned out to be, seems a lot more understandable than not going to the Oscars together.
I think what I said was that I wouldn't go out of my way to look for a project for the two of us," Bonham Carter says. "But The Theory of Flight was something that I knew I had to do the minute I read it. The script was so funny and so smart, and I couldn't believe that it was being offered to me--that I didn't have to audition or beg to be seen. About a week after I read it I was banging on to Ken about how excellent the script was. Ken picked it up and read it and said, 'Oh, this is excellent.' I said, 'Yes, that's what I've been saying.' And he asked if the boy had been cast."
The boy?" I interrupt. "I love that. In Hollywood, they always refer to the woman in the film as 'the girl,' but I don't think I've ever heard an actor refer to himself as 'the boy.'"
Bonham Carter blushes. "Well actually, Ken didn't say it like that. He probably said,"here she lowers her voice to imitate Branagh'"Has the male lead been cast yet?' I doubt he used the term 'boy.'
"It's funny," she continues. "We're forever 'the girl' out here in Hollywood, and then we're the mother. It's like there is no womanhood for an actress. But anyway, Ken was sort of hinting around about the part, and I said, 'Do you think you're right for it?' Because I thought there was another actor who was more right for the part. What we did was, we auditioned together, so we could see how it would work. We also thought that maybe we knew each other too well and that we wouldn't be able to believe the lie with each other. But of course we just laughed all the way through the audition, because we found it very funny. He was obviously very right for it. And everybody else was absolutely, categorically sure that he was right for it. My only worry was that our relationship would upstage the film, that there would be more written about us working together rather than about the film itself."
"Well," I say, "there's a lot to talk about with the film because the subject is taboo. Your character is in a wheelchair with Lou Gehrig's disease, barely able to speak, but still wants to lose her virginity, right?"
"My character is dying, and she knows it, and she wants to have sex before her life is over. And Ken's character wants to fly. It's an unlikely friendship that forms between them, but I can't stress enough that this is a funny, unsentimental movie. It tackles tough subjects, but it does it with a really deft hand. Ken's the lead ..."
"Wait," I say. "Are you saying you're 'the girl'?"
Bonham Carter turns red. "I guess we're both the leads. The Theory of Flight is about how gravity is tying them both down. I don't want to give away too much, but I am very excited about this film."
With that, Bonham Carter gets up and moves to yet another seat at the table because the sun is following her.
"Ohh, look who's there," she says, pointing behind me.
I look over to see Howard Stern slinking toward a table with his wife, Alison, and I signal Bonham Carter with my eyes, saying nothing. Stern sits with his back to us and slouches in a way that says he doesn't want to be disturbed.
"Do you know him?" Bonham Carter asks, visibly excited about this sighting.
"I interviewed him about a year ago," I tell her.
"Go over and say hello then," she says.
"No way," I say. "Look at him, he doesn't want anyone near him. Back to The Theory of Flight. Your father is in a wheelchair, the result of surgery on his brain that caused him to have a stroke when you were 13. Is that one of the reasons you took this role?"
"No," she says. Then she seems to change her mind. "Well, it's not like I thought I could bring something to the role because of what happened to my father. But I think because of my father's illness, I am more open to certain things. I understood what it would be like to have your brain functioning 100 percent like my father does, but to have your body fail you. I guess when I read this script, I thought, 'Yes, there's something here that I could tap into.'"
Let's talk about some of your earlier films," I say, wondering where on earth to start. Bonham Carter began acting at 18, when she passed up university in favor of starring in Lady Jane opposite Cary Elwes. It was not until she was cast as the repressed but curious Miss Honeychurch in Merchant Ivory's wonderful A Room with a View that she was noticed, and she went on to do her second Merchant Ivory film, Maurice. Next, she played Ophelia in Mel Gibson's Hamlet, and then she did her third Merchant Ivory film, Howards End with Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins. Next came Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite, which led to The Wings of a Dove. Since then she's made yet another period film, A Merry War, an adaptation of George Orwell's 1936 novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying.
"So tell me about your first film, Lady Jane."
"Nobody had ever seen it," she says, "and then they started playing it every few hours on HBO. Now I get all these teenage girls who just go mad for it because she's a perfect heroine--smart, and dead at 15."
"After that you worked with Daniel Day-Lewis in A Room with a View--"
"And I was so scared because the second I laid eyes on him I knew he was going to be a huge star. And I didn't think for one minute that people would believe that his character would fall in love with mine. But Dan is very sweet. He used to walk around singing these Irish ditties, and he made me feel comfortable. I'm a big fan."
"Somebody told me they saw you years ago on Miami Vice playing Don Johnson's drug-addicted girlfriend."
"They called and asked if I would do it," Bonham Carter says with a shrug, "and I said 'Sure.' It was the hippest show in America, so I thought, why not?"
"And then you played Ophelia to Mel Gibson's Hamlet--"
"I have a big problem with Ophelia. I think she's the most unoriginal part, and then she suddenly goes mad. But it's easier, I think, to do Ophelia in the movies than on the stage, because you can have those moments where the camera stays on her and the audience can see what's going on. This version of Hamlet was sort of the Reader's Digest version. But Mel is fantastic. When I worked with him, he was considered the sexiest man alive. But he's such a joker and so relaxed that he makes you forget all about that."
"I can't really talk to you about Frankenstein," I say. "There's so much goo in it--it actually made me sick." I won't even go into the business of a naked Robert De Niro flopping around in that goo.
"Yes, there was a lot of goo," agrees Bonham Carter. "I'm not really sure I have much to say about it, either."
"I think people were really surprised to see you in Mighty Aphrodite. You don't seem like a Woody Allen leading lady."
"I always dreamed of working with Woody. I know it's a very unoriginal dream--everyone wants to work with him. I was amazed that I was thought about for the part, because it wasn't exactly one I thought was right for me. It was very blatantly written for an American accent. I arrived for my five-minute interview, and I read my part with an English accent. I did a truly terrible audition, probably my worst, and I walked out thinking I had blown it. A week later they called to say that Woody wanted me. And I said, 'Can I read the whole script before I accept it?' There was silence, because, as I found out later, that never happens--he never lets anyone read the whole thing. They said OK, but that I had to come to New York to read it, which I did, and I decided to play her with an American accent. Social interaction isn't Woody's biggest hobby, but we did quite well, I think."
"And now you've been busy working on The Fight Club in LA.," I say. "How are you doing here?"
"I'll tell you," she says, "I never felt that Hollywood was very welcoming to me. And I wasn't even sure that I wanted it to be. But I'm starting to feel more comfortable here."
"Well, it doesn't hurt that you're working with two of the hottest guys in film for The Fight Club."
"Can you believe it?" Bonham Carter says, as if I'd just exposed a scam. "Brad and Ed are very different. One of them is the Adonis, the other is really interesting looking--you figure out who's who. Ed's very cerebral and Brad's very intuitive. They're both really easy and delightful to work with. Meeting Brad was a surprise, because he is the least affected megastar I've ever seen. He's incredibly straightforward, a remarkably whole human being for the amount of attention he's gotten. He's amazingly well adjusted. And totally unaffected, very un-self-involved. He doesn't seem at all neurotic."
"Which one of them is your character involved with?"
"Both of them..."
"Hmmmm, my kind of girl."
"Exactly. She's a great character. I think of this film as a cross between Harold and Maude and Raging Bull. I'm in the Harold and Maude part. People are either going to love it, or they're going to be really offended by it. I don't think there's going to be much middle ground."
"Is the shoot going smoothly?"
Bonham Carter leans forward into the sun and whispers conspiratorially, "Listen, this movie is going to take almost six months to film. And they put me up at this great hotel, but I'm not in all the scenes so I have an unbelievable amount of time off. They're all working endless hours, but I'm not. Because, to tell you the truth, in this one I play 'the girl.' And you know what? I couldn't be happier."
As we stand up to leave, Bonham Carter starts nudging me with her hip so I'll move toward Howard Stern. "I dare you to go up to him," she says.
I almost run past Stern. Bonham Carter catches up with me outside the restaurant. "Who is that, anyway?" she asks.
My jaw drops. But I'm not about to explain Howard Stern to this Brit. "I still can't believe you didn't say hello to him," she says.
"You don't even know who 'him' is," I point out. "Besides, if you and Ken were having a quiet lunch, would you want me coming over and reminding you that we met today?"
"Yes," she yells. "Of course I would. Please make sure if you ever see me in public that you come over and say 'Hi.'"
Which reminds me that Bonham Carter really hasn't been in Hollywood for very long.
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Martha Frankel interviewed Julia Louis-Dreyfus for the September 98 issue of Movieline.