Helena Bonham Carter on Being Bad for Harry Potter and Alice
Posted 03.01.10 by reelz
Connecting the dots between her performances as the evil witch Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter movies and the hot-headed Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland, Helena Bonham Carter acknowledges that she's carved out a bit of a niche for herself as an "imaginary terrorist."
Keeping in mind the younger viewers though, she goes on to tell the Vulture blog that she did do a few things to keep the Red Queen from being too terribly disturbing.
She can't quite say her R's properly. I thought that would make her more a figure of fun than purely terrifying, and quite childish actually. But I'm always a little bit jealous because Tim lets Johnny do everything. With me it's like, "No! Less! You're way over the top!" And you'll just be like, "Well, Johnny gets away with it... "
It's hardly as if she never gets to go over the top, though. The Red Queen is always ready to lop off someone's head at the drop of a hat, an obsession that, Bonham Carter explains, started as jealousy of people with normal-sized heads and evolved into a kind of psychological tic, like Tourette's.
As for reprising the role of Bellatrix for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, she concedes in a separate interview with the Dish Rag blog (via The Leaky Cauldron), that despite the "horrible" things the Death Eater does, she approached the role with a certain relish.
She is sort of Voldemort's right hand woman and she's sadistic and I've killed. I do really horrible things... I killed Sirius Black ages ago. I kill Dobby in this one, and I torture Hermione.
Oh, that's [what] fun is ... I got to pretend to be Hermione because Hermione takes this potion that makes her look like me. I had to act Hermione pretending to be me.... It was fun being seventeen.
After these two bad-girl performances, she's looking for a new direction. She told Vulture that she recently turned down a role as a Victorian serial killer to avoid being too thoroughly type-cast.