Helena Bonham Carter's Real Name: Helena Bonham Carter

Quick answer: Helena Bonham Carter is her real name. Bonham Carter is a double-barreled family surname, sometimes hyphenated as Bonham-Carter, not a stage name. She was born on May 26, 1966, in London and is known for A Room with a View, Fight Club, Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter, and The King's Speech (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

The Library of Congress name authority files her as "Bonham Carter, Helena, 1966-" and records "Carter, Helena Bonham-" as a variant. It cites one older source that prints her name as "Helena Bonham-Carter," born 5/26/66. Another LOC citation gives her birthplace as Islington, London, and notes that she was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours.

Britannica says her mother, Elena, was a psychotherapist. Her father, Raymond, was a merchant banker and a grandson of H. H. Asquith, the British prime minister from 1908 to 1916. He became partly paralyzed after surgery for a brain tumor. Helena decided at 13 to act, and by 16 she was playing Shakespeare's Juliet in a TV commercial for a stereo system.

Career highlights

Her first major role was the TV movie A Pattern of Roses (1983). Director Trevor Nunn persuaded her to skip university and take the title role in Lady Jane (1986). Around the same time she played Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View (1985), which received eight Oscar nominations. Period roles followed: Ophelia in Hamlet (1990), Helen Schlegel in Howards End (1992), and Elizabeth in Frankenstein (1994). Her first Academy Award nomination came for The Wings of the Dove (1997).

She played Marla Singer in David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). After meeting Tim Burton on Planet of the Apes (2001), she became his longtime partner and appeared in his Corpse Bride, Sweeney Todd, Alice in Wonderland, and Dark Shadows. She earned a second Oscar nomination as Queen Elizabeth in The King's Speech (2010) and won acclaim as Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter films. She also played Miss Havisham in Great Expectations (2012), Madame Thénardier in Les Misérables (2012), the fairy godmother in Cinderella (2015), and roles in Suffragette, Ocean's 8, and the Enola Holmes films.

Name notes for searchers

Search engines often split her name. Her surname is the full "Bonham Carter," so she is "Ms. Bonham Carter," not "Ms. Carter." Library catalogs alphabetize her under B. The hyphenated form "Bonham-Carter" appears in older references and refers to the same family name.