*This is the page where I'm going to post Info about Helena through-out time.*
Helena was born in Golders Green, London on May 26, 1966. Her mother Elena, 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.
Helena Bonham Carter's maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón, was of half Spanish and half Jewish ancestry.
Bonham Carter has two brothers, Thomas and Edward and a distant cousin, a fellow actor Crispin Bonham-Carter, who played Mr.Bingley in the 1995 BBC Production, Pride and Prejudice. Helena was educated at the South Hampstead High School, a girls' independent 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 University, not because of her grades or her test scores, but because school officials were afraid that she would leave mid-term to pursue her acting career. Because of Cambridge's rejection, Bonham Carter decided to concentrate fully on acting.
When Bonham Carter was just five, her mother had a serious nervous breakdown, from which it took her 3 years to recover. Five years after her moms recovery there was a more terrible familial blow. While hollidaying in Greece, Helena's father went deaf in one ear. He was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma, and a routine operation was carried out to remove the benign tomour.
After 9 hours in surgery, Raymond, only 50 years of age, had a stroke that left him half-paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. In 1979, Helena won a national writing contest and used the money won to pay for her entry into the actors directory 'Spotlight'. She made her professional acting début at the age of 16, in a tv commercial.
She also had a part in a minor TV film A Pattern of Roses (1983). Her first starring film role was in Lady Jane (1984, released 1986) which had mixed reviews. Bonham Carter auditioned for the role of Nancy Spungen in Sid and Nancy (1986), however she lost out to Chloe Webb, and also turned down the role of Bess McNeill in Breaking the Waves (1996) due to the sexual content.
In October 2001, she began her current relationship with director Tim Burton (while he was engaged to and living with actress Lisa Marie, who was also Burton collaborator and co-producer), whom she met while filming Planet of the Apes. They live in Belsize Park, London, in adjoining houses with a connecting hallway, each part decorated and styled to suit their own personalities, because they felt they couldn't live 'together' but didn't want to live apart. They purchased the house when she became pregnant with the couple's first child, son Billy Ray Burton, who was born on 4 October 2003.
At age 41, she gave birth to her second child, a daughter named Nell Burton, on 15 December 2007 in Central London. She says she named her daughter Nell after all the "Helens" in her family lineage. In August 2008, four of her relatives were killed in a safari bus crash in South Africa, she was given indefinite leave from filming Terminator Salvation, and returned later on to complete the rest of her filming.
In 2008, both Bonham Carter and Burton put their American apartments up for sale. The apartments are located in the Greenwich Village area, in New York City. The couple sold them for a collective $8.75 million. In early October 2008, it was released that Bonham Carter had become a patron of the charity, Action Duchenne, the national charity established to support parents and sufferers of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Bonham Carter released the statement:
"As a patron of Action Duchenne, I would like to urge as many people as possible to find out about the work of the charity and the devastating effects of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. Treatments and a cure seem tantalisingly close but they will not appear without further support and funding. Please join Action Duchenne in helping to make muscle wasting history."
In December 2008, Bonham Carter lent her voice to a MTV domestic violence public service announcement, reciting a passage about love from the book of Corinthians in the Bible. The 60-second commercial features a dysfunctional couple in a domestic environment. No dialogue is heard — only accompanying music and Bonham Carter's voice. Bonham Carter recorded her vocal in a single take for the ad, which aired on December 2, 2008. The ad will air across MTV in the UK and across Europe as part of MTV's Staying Alive campaign. MTV will also make the ad available online and is considering running it in cinemas.
Early 2009, Bonham Carter joined fellow Hollywood A-listers Ewan McGregor, Kate Winslet, Liam Neeson, Helen Mirren and more, leaving the imprint of her lips on a card and signing it. The kiss prints, which are featured in the window of Newcastle’s famous Fenwick store, will now be auctioned off for charity.
