Helena Bonham Carter: “Happiness has made me more trusting”

We meet in a cafe near her home in Belsize Park, in Hampstead, an old residential area of ​​London. There are low houses and gloomy parks, here the sun always breaks through the branches of mighty elms. It smells of lavender water in such an English way, and the tapping of sticks of old-timers on the pavement is so clearly heard … But in this old age, there is no decrepitude around. It’s different here: old means lived-in. Long rooted. Settled. “And here, even at night, the gates of the cemetery are wide open, where they began to bury as early as the XNUMXth century. Meaning: Welcome! Anytime!” These last two words (“Welcome! At any time!” – Approx. ed.) My interlocutor pronounces so in British, on a light exhalation, so carefree and sarcastic at the same time, which involuntarily confirms an opinion about herself, with which she is not very then I agree. That she is English to the core. That the corset and the image of the Edwardian touchy suited her like no one else, and that is why she was chosen as the main “English rose” of modern cinema after her roles in “A Room with a View” by James Ivory and “Wings of the Dove” by Ian Softley. And that it is quite natural for her to play the Queen of England, the Queen Mother, in The King’s Speech! Tom Hooper…

Despite the “Molotov cocktail” in her blood (Helena Bonham Carter, in addition to English, also has Czech, Jewish, Spanish, and even Russian ancestors), she is the most perfect and complete Englishness. And she would have been, even if her great-great-grandfather had not been Lord Asquith, Earl of Oxford and Prime Minister of Great Britain under Edward VII. English irony and English simplicity in conversation. She has an inimitable blackish-humorous British attitude, she has English tastes, and she is sympathetic in English: ordering herself an espresso, an iced apple cocktail and sparkling water, she sympathetically wonders if I really don’t want something else besides my lonely ” americano”… And she is also independent in English. Now this independence is expressed, for example, in a suit. Bonham Carter is wearing a long black dress with frills in a small flower, by her chair is a long black umbrella with frills, but on her feet she has heavy-looking boots, as if occupied by an astronaut from the future – with a platform moving away from the earth, on a sort of broken heels. And she does not expect questions from me, but herself – with all her English frankness – gets down to business. Our common cause of interviewing her, as I now understand.

H. B.-K.: Firstly, my mother (Elena Propper de Callejon, whose family belongs to the social elite of continental Europe. – Approx. ed.) is a psychotherapist herself. When I was five, she suffered a severe nervous breakdown. Her father died, and she could not accept his death. Couldn’t handle her. It was all-consuming grief. The grief that stopped her life. And ours, our family’s life too. I still remember how my mother lay motionless in bed for several months … With her eyes open. Looking at the ceiling… She was ill for three years. Then her therapist recommended that she work with herself as a patient. This saved her. And then she guided me. When I didn’t go to university because I wanted to be an actress, I felt desperately insecure. Absolutely lost. I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing and how to do it in general. I was twenty when I played with amazing directors, along with the actors I worshiped: Judi Dench, Maggie Smith … I became quite famous, I was nominated for serious awards, I even received them … and I felt like a complete idiot – I didn’t do anything I can, I’m failing roles. I had the feeling that I was pretending to be someone else – he was someone else, and worthy of prizes, awards, fame. Dad unwittingly contributed to this feeling. He read reviews in which my amazing falling into the images of Edwardian maidens was explained by the “blue blood” supposedly flowing in my veins, and he spoke in such a measured, measured way: “Yes, if only they were interested in our ancestry. Who was not among the Bonham Carters and Asquiths, it was hereditary aristocrats. It was then that psychotherapy came into my life for the first time. And I learned: to understand how you live, you have to live. Don’t think about it, but live with it. I’m now a big fan of CBT – it doesn’t require months on the couch, I just write down all my bad thoughts, everything corrosive, everything negative in a column. And in the other column – counterarguments. And so I begin, damn it, to control what I think. It was a revelation for me to realize that not everything I think is true just because I think it is. Why, many people live with this dark world in their heads! But when you see all your negativity written down in a column, on paper, you realize how cruel you are to yourself. Cruel in a way that I would never be cruel to anyone else… Well, the next time I didn’t audition, I didn’t think I didn’t get the role because I’m a terrible actress. I already knew how to stop myself. But this does not mean that I like myself, I just begin to understand how to live with myself. The fact that I am not delighted with myself is not an obstacle to happiness.

And yet you have chosen a profession in which self-confidence is so important.

H. B.-K.: I have chosen a profession that can be therapy in itself! After the birth of my daughter, I went to the shooting of “Harry Potter” with great enthusiasm – there I could yell! Yelling, shouting – just by role. And through the cry to release all the stress. Then I understood why the children were yelling – not crying, but yelling. This is a release from tension. Release of emotions. And adults keep them locked up, and emotions beat inside us, poisoning everything inside … I’m sure that people get sick because they don’t express their feelings.

Can you remember the moment you decided to become an actress?

H. B.-K.: I was thirteen when my dad got sick – a stroke. Until the end of his life, he was semi-paralyzed and chained to a wheelchair. You see, I am the youngest of three children in our family. It’s funny, but perhaps from the depths of the unconscious, the dictates of the majorat, the ancient feudal law, appeared, according to which only the eldest child in the family inherits the title and property. In a word, I acutely felt that I must become someone right now, I must learn to live on my own, I must make the most important life decision. Searched and found an agent. But acting itself came from something else: the illness of my father, the change in all life realities scared me so much that I wanted to … slip away into a fictional world. I could not fix the one that surrounded me then, but I could create my own, under my control. I still think that we need to get out of reality more often. And from myself real. Our dreams and fantasies educate us… No, I really think so. For example, when I was waiting for Nell, we bought Billy a doll (Nell and Billy are the children of the actress. – Approx. ed.). A boy a doll – it seems strange. But I wanted him, playing her, fantasizing, getting used to the girl next to him, preparing for a meeting with his sister, albeit at the level of fantasy.

And how did it happen?

H. B.-K.: Everything worked!

Do you remember what kind of child you were as a child?

H. B.-K.: Well of course yes! It seems to me that I was born with a kind of, as we say, “old nose”, and then I stopped developing. I was a reasonable child until I was 13, and then I refused to grow up, refused to jump into adulthood. Until the age of 30, she lived with her parents. I was kept by that childish feeling – because of my dad, of course, because of his illness – that if I was at home, with my parents, I could fix something, improve something. No, I had serious affairs. With Kenneth (actor and director Kenneth Branagh. – Approx. ed.), we spent 5 years together, but at the same time we did not live together. I was “married” to my parental family. Now I would put it this way.

And how did you get divorced?

H. B.-K.: At some point, she moved into a house a few miles away. Probably mature. Adulthood, I now know, is the acceptance of what we cannot change. I guess I finally grew up and stopped hoping to improve my parents’ lives. Or did she decide that she had already improved? .. But, one way or another, now I can no longer imagine myself without my own space. And hopefully this is also a sign of maturity.

Rather positive or sad fact?

H. B.-K.: This is life. I feel very lucky, so I don’t find fault. You know, at thirty-five I realized that that’s it, I’m alone, nothing portends a handsome prince, and there will be nothing more in my life … I was completely unprepared to meet Tim – but still I did. And it still surprises me. So did Billy and Nell. I even expect some other wonderful events from life, which, in fact, is not in my nature. Happiness has made me more trusting. And definitely dumber. But for this stupidity I do not scold myself.