Brilliance and Beauty

I'd told myself for a long time that I wasn't going to write this post, but after the blasphemy that was this Monday's tutor it was essentially inevitable. The fact that Megan is currently tapping away at her keyboard for the exact same reason I am was just the trigger that set me off. You know exactly how I feel about Helena Bonham Carter so now you just have to sit back and I will explain why this is and, more importantly, why you should feel that way too. I've known who Helena is for as long as I can remember and been in love with her since the Order of the Phoenix came out in 2007, incidentally one of the worst Potter films but the one that introduced two of the best characters in cinema, Bellatrix (obviously) and Luna. Anyway, we're not here to talk magic, but rather about this magical woman. (see what I did there? Good wasn't it? Oh fine we can just move on)

My first point is so blindingly obvious it even goes in the title, she is bloody beautiful isn't she? I realised in chemistry the other day that if you doubled my age I'd still be a decade younger than she is, but at 46 she is still one of the most attractive people on this planet. Certainly when you only look at people over 40 there isn't really anyone to contest my point. What makes Helena so brilliant is that she's unique, a bloody rare quality when so many celebrities seem to be pure carbon copies of one another, I know there are other celebrities that stand out from the crowd but no one does it quite so well as the "corset queen" (a title I'll get to later). Take awards ceremonies as a nice easy example, as soon as I say that you can get a pretty clear idea in your head of what an average actress would be wearing. Fancy but fairly simple dress, certainly shoes that match at least but not Helena.  You might argue that it's a desperate bid for attention like the sort of thing lady gaga would do, but I don't think so because she always looks almost uncomfortable when photographed in public, like she'd rather be avoiding the attention and that's why she isn't dressed up in the same way as everyone else. In photo-shoots and when acting she always seems far more relaxed than she ever seems as herself, so I don't think she dresses like that to try and stand out, I think she dresses like that because she is truly unique and lets be honest with ourselves here: normal is boring, unique is sexy. Right I think 282 words just about covers beauty enough to get by, if I don't stop now I might go on forever. So lets get on to why she's so much more than a pretty face.
Part of the blasphemy I mentioned at the start of this post is essentially "Helena Bonham Carter plays one role through all her films" now I agree the two examples, Lovett and Thenardier, have quite a bit in common but take more than 15 seconds to think about it and you'll see how ridiculous a statement that is. In fact I don't even need words to deal with it, just a picture of a few of the roles she's played will do, you don't even need to recognise them all, just see that they're clearly quite different. There's a possibly imaginary psychopath, between the queen mother and a chimp. The same role? Far from it.

Roles like Mrs Lovett may be what people expect from Helena now but they are a far cry from what made her famous and gave her the nickname I mentioned earlier. Roles like Olivia and Ophelia in adaptations of Shakespeare, as well as things like Elizabeth in Frankenstein (none of which feature above) are all the sort of "Prim Edwardian" style characters that previously defined her. She said she wanted to shock people and if you'd watched her carer from the start (obviously I didn't, I was -10 when she started making films) I think you'd have experienced a fair deal of shock over the course of it. Unfortunately I don't think there are many roles left that will give her the chance to shock people any more, she's covered such a ridiculously wide range that nothing would be a surprise in the future. Of course she could always act badly, that would be pretty shocking to me at least. I've seen 15 films which have a credit for Helena Bonham Carter, all of them were good. I know that only covers 1/5 of the films she's in but I can't think of anyone else who's so consistently good across so many genres and roles. 
A range that greatly exceeds that of Tim Burton, who is a brilliant director don't get me wrong, but there are people who insist that Helena is famous because of Tim. There is no other way of putting it, that's just pain bullshit. Helena and Tim met in 2001 while filming Planet of the Apes. By this point Helena ha appeared in 41 films across 18 years. Working with Tim has been a significant part of her recent career, but even since 2011 she's been in Harry Potter, Great Expectations and Les Miserables, none of which involved Tim Burton, all of which were very successful and the two I've seen were both brilliant. So Helena Bonham Carter is definitely not Tim Burton's "wife and actress". She isn't even his wife, they're an odd pair like that, but like I said, odd trumps normal any day.
Ok it's coming up to 11 o'clock so I'll leave this here for now. Let me know if I've missed anything, or if you disagree with anything I've said let me know. I'll leave you with one (more if I ever work out the way to make photos behave on blogger) of my all time favourite photos of Helena, aren't I good to you?