Newspaper apologises to Helena Bonham Carter
By Olga Craig
Published: 9:00PM GMT 06 Mar 2010
It was oh, so delicately phrased. Designed, indeed, to smooth the seriously ruffled feathers of the extremely affronted luvvie and aristocratic diva, Helena Bonham Carter.
In a deliciously worded apology yesterday, a national newspaper stated sorry to the somewhat eccentric film star for criticising her bizarre living arrangements.
Acknowledging that she, her partner and her two kids live in three houses that are fashioned into one – one assumes on the word of the actress herself – the Independent newspaper was happy to confirm that Bonham Carter’s lifestyle was not at all ”chilling” as it had stated the week before.
Indeed any such suggestion was unfounded, it told its readers, before gushing that it accepted Ms Bonham Carter is a caring mom and apologised to her for “suggesting otherwise”.
And so there you have it. The fragrant, if somewhat bohemian and gloriously deshabille, Ms Bonham Carter happily confirms that she lives in one London town house, her partner (the equally eccentric film director Tim Burton) is next door and in a third interconnected home live the couple’s two young kids – Billy Ray, six, and Nell, two – with their nanny.
By anybody’s standards it is unconventional arrangement.
But, given her track record, it’s nothing that one would not anticipate from the bloomer-wearing great granddaughter of British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, who does the school run on a tricycle.
Though clearly a devoted couple and loving parents, the Burton Bonham Carters (nothing so conventional as a wedding certificate in sight) see nothing strange in their domestic set up. They all, states Ms Bonham Carter, coexist happily in what she describes as ”separate domains” that are dominated by distinctly vivid decor.
Before meeting Burton, Bonham Carter was just as famous for her kooky fashion and dishevelled coiffeur (she was once described as resembling a bag of laundry beneath a bird’s nest) as she was for her bodice-ripper roles in period dramas such as Room With A View, Howards End and Lady Jane.
When she met Burton he was known as a Californian nerd who was fascinated by headless corpses and had more than a passing interest in all things morbid. Their combination has produced a loving union. But a seriously wacky lifestyle.
The homes are connected by what Ms Bonham Carter describes as an ”airlock” through which they pass to meet up. “Mine looks like something out of Beatrix Potter,” she says. “But if you go over to his house, you are in a totally different place.
“He’s got dead Oompa Loompas lying around, and skeletons and weird alien lights. It’s like going from the land of the living to the land of the dead. He has neon lights to illuminate the gloom. He thinks his side is James Bond.”
But it is over the festive season that Burton’s obsession with the dark side comes to the fore. “He decorates the Christmas tree with dead babies and slime balls and things. It looks lovely from afar.
“But as you get closer, you realise it’s rather gory. He always visits, which is very touching.”
Sometimes, she confides, they even sleep together.
“There is a snoring issue,” she says. “I talk, he snores. The other thing is that he is an insomniac so he needs to watch tv to get to sleep. I need silence.
“To me, it makes complete sense. If you have got some money and you can afford it, why not have your own space?”
Together they seem an eclectic mismatch: she, ivory-skinned with a plummy accent and a penchant for Merchant Ivory parts; he, half Goth and given to dubbing grey make-up on his face before facing the cameras to enhance his ashen, hangdog expression. Even their parenting is rather eccentric. When their daughter was born two years ago they did not name her for seven months. Press reports speculated endlessly before the couple settled on Nell.
But while Burton is the boss on set, it is Bonham Carter who rules the domestic roost.
”At home I am the boss,” she says. ”Tim calls me chief and I would say, on the whole, he likes me to make the decisions. At work, that is where we sometimes get it wrong. He’s the boss and I’m not as silent as he would like me to be.”
And neither does he show his partner any favouritism when it comes to roles. Burton insists she audition along with everyone else. And it can create tension, she has confided.
”I auditioned for Sweeney Todd and then there was five weeks of silence,” she says. ”All he stated was ‘well done’ at the end and that was that. For five weeks I heard nothing – and we were living together. So you can imagine the strain.”
The pair are, she admits ”a bonkers couple”. It has a lot to do with their hair, she says. ”The lack of a comb, the lack of hair care. But he is not a mad professor. His time management is good. He is financially responsible. A part of him maybe exists in an alternative reality but he is a very sane, grounded and good father. But it’s such a nice life and we have fun. Tim is a great find. I think our sensibilities go well together. He is dynamic and funny. We are soul mates.”
Proof, then, that living apart is the new together.
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