Oscar Nominees!
Actress Helena Bonham Carter shocking childhood story revealed?
[Feb. 25]
Helena Bonham Carter dedicated her Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress to her mother, Elena. Helena Bonham Carter is nominated for the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Queen Elizabeth alongside Colin Firth who plays King George VI in The King’s Speech.
But few realize the quiet struggle that Helena Bonham Carter has endured leading up to the nomination for this Sunday’s Oscars. In spite of growing up privileged, Helena struggled through the mental breakdown of her own mother when Helena was just five years old, followed by a stroke that left her father a quadriplegic and blind in one eye eight years later. Meanwhile Bonham Clark suffered years of depression.
Her friends say this legacy haunts the star and led to her living at home until she was 32, reports the Daily Mail. “I was trying to make it better,” Helena says. “I thought: ‘If I remain a child, it will make up for what happened to Dad.'”
Helena became an actress to cope with her father’s illness, the Daily Mail reports. Now, having risen through the ranks to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for The Wings of the Dove in 1997, a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination, a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Best Actress nomination, and a Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Best Actress nomination, Helena Bonham Carter is at it again with a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her perfromance in The King’s Speech.
“She took me to the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards in LA,” Elena Bonham Carter said of Helena. “Now I’m just hoping she can repeat her success at the Oscars.”
According to the Daily Mail, Helena dedicated the nomination to her mother:
“This is for all the best supporting wives — the Queen Mother herself, and my mum. There is no doubt that if my father were alive, he would have given it to her. She was the best supporting wife you could ever have wished for.”
Of additional interest is what Bonham Carter may wear to the Oscars. She wore mismatched shoes to the Golden Globes in January, and she already is known for her quirky sense of dress — something between Gothic and Victorian. Stylist Gok Wan calls Bonham Carter the “female equivalent” of Johnny Depp, which seems complimentary to Helena Bonham Carter’s style and demeanor.
“She’s quite eclectic, she wears clothes that suits her, that she wants to wear, that she feels are expressing herself. So as far as I’m concerned she’s doing it right, because she’s doing it for herself and no one else and that’s really what your own style should be,” Gok said.
Helena Bonham Carter obviously agrees and has no intention of doing anything different for the Oscars, despite criticisms. “Of course I’ll have fun. It’s probably going to be a catastrophe!” Carter said at Monday’s Oscar nominee luncheon in Beverly Hills. “I’m going to go for it.”
This year’s Oscars will be held Sunday, February 27, 2011.