News: Helena Bonham Carter

Despite having won yet more rave reviews as the beleaguered mother in this week’s latest addition to the ranks of British light comedy that is Sixty Six, Bonham Carter’s next project was an altogether more hammy role – as the somewhat sinister and decidedly scruffy-looking pure-blood Bellatrix Lestrange in next summer’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. With her added to the cast, there’s practically no big-name British actor left who hasn’t appeared in the Harry Potter franchise…

Bonham Carter does have a few more “serious” roles coming up in the next year, however. She’ll take on the role of Collette alongside Susan Sarandon’s Eleanor in Eleanor & Collette – a story of female bonding as Bonham Carter’s lawyer and Sarandon’s psychiatric patient come together to sue a mental hospital. She will also be taking on a spot of romantic comedy, as one half of a pair of ex-lovers who are reunited within the confines of a transatlantic flight, in Stand By Love.

Surely most anticipated, however – although probably not for the Harry Potter fans among you – will be the Johnny Depp-starring Sweeny Todd, based on the hit Broadway musical and directed by Bonham Carter’s quirky long-term boyfriend (and father of her son) Tim Burton. As Depp and Burton have – as yet – failed to make a bad film together after five joint projects, it should be something pretty special…