Name: Helena Bonham Carter
Date of Birth: May 26 1966
Birth Place: Golders Green London UK
Nationality: British
Education: Westminster School in London, UK
Claim to fame: as Kate Croy in Wings of the Dove (1997)
Occupation: Actress, Model

Helena Bonham Carter's career has been one long struggle against preconceptions and virus-like rumours. Many, particularly in America, believe her to be related to the Royal Family, and thus born with a silver spoon in her mouth - neither is true. Many more consider her to be the quintessential English rose, her pre-Raphaelite looks priming her for a lifetime of Shakespeare, EM Forster and Henry James adaptations. In fact, she's performed a huge variety of roles and, by birth, is actually far from pure-blood English. Only now, after her star-turn alongside Brad Pitt in Fight Club and, coming soon, her appearance with Steve Martin in Novocaine, and as Ari, an activist chimpanzee in Tim Burton's Planet Of The Apes, has she come to be recognised for what she is - one of the UK's finest and most successful contemporary actresses.

She may not be royalty but, born in Golders Green, north London, on May 26th, 1966, Helena does come from classy stock. Her great-grandfather was Lord Asquith, liberal Prime Minister between 1908 and 1916. Her grandmother was Violet Bonham Carter, a renowned politician, orator and member of the House Of Lords (an excellent female role model), while her grand-uncle was Anthony Asquith, legendary English director of such classics as Carrington VC and The Importance Of Being Earnest. Yet, despite this exceptionally English bloodline, Helena's corpuscles are a heady mix, her father, Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker by trade, having married Elena, predominantly French and Spanish - with a smattering of Jewish, Russian and Viennese for good measure.

It was Elena who made the first violent impact upon Helena's young life. When the girl was just 5, her mother had a serious nervous breakdown, from which it took her three years to recover. Upon her recovery, her experience in therapy led her to become a psychotherapist herself - Helena now pays her to read her scripts and deliver her opinion of the characters' psychological motivations. Five years after her mother's recovery, there was a more terrible familial blow. While holidaying in Greece, Raymond went deaf in one ear. He was diagnosed with acoustic neuroma, and a routine operation was carried out to remove the benign tumour. It went badly wrong. After 9 hours in theatre, Raymond, only 50 years of age, had a stroke that left him half-paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. With her two older brothers (both now bankers) at college, Helena was left to help her mother cope. She would later study her father's movements and mannerisms for her role in The Theory Of Flight.

Helena is not a natural exhibitionist yet, for some reason, her father's illness drove her to pursue acting. Perhaps a sudden realisation of his mortality made her want to impress him quickly. She remembers thinking about becoming an actress when she was 5, and later wanting to be Kate Jackson from Charlie's Angels. She also recalls a visit from a family friend, a glamorous actress, and how impressed she was that both her brothers (and her father) were noticeably attracted to the woman. Attending South Hampstead School For Girls, Helena took a leaf from a schoolmate's book and, using money she'd won in a national poetry competition, got herself an agent and placed a photo of herself in a casting directory.

Work would finally come in 1982, when she was 16 - though she had already begun to perform onstage. Now attending Westminster School, she got a part as Juliet in an ad for stereos. Then came a real break. Accompanying a schoolfriend who needed moral support, she went to an audition in Nothing Hill. This was for A Pattern Of Roses, based on KM Peyton's 1972 novel and to be financed by Channel 4. In it, a sick young boy uncovers a tale of disastrous young love from 70 years before, and finds himself haunted by the protagonists. Spotting Helena, the producers decided she would make an excellent Edwardian ghost and hired her - once they'd convinced her father that it wouldn't interfere with her exams. As a side-note, Helena was not a union member and, being as only one non-union actor could be used, another non-union hopeful was bumped off the bill. His name was Hugh Grant (learning little from the experience, he'd later also get dropped from Mel Gibson vehicle The Bounty).

Though still at school, Helena persisted with acting and, when a picture of her in the Tatler was spotted by renowned director Trevor Nunn, she found herself cast in Lady Jane. This was a classic historical tragedy, about Lady Jane Grey who, in the chaotic aftermath of Henry VIII's death, finds love in an arranged marriage, is placed on the throne of England, and is then usurped and executed. Helena's looks and natural reserve and enthusiasm served her well - she was excellent. This led to a terrifying test, as she was cast as Lucy Honeychurch in EM Forster's A Room With A View and, having hardly learned to act at all, was matched with Maggie Smith and Judi Dench.

A Room With A View was a huge success, rushing the release of Lady Jane which was shot before it. Helena would present an Oscar with Matthew Broderick, creating her own costume and introducing the world to what she knows as "shambles chic". Having won the part of Lucy, Helena had been prompted by her father to take this opportunity to launch an acting career. Consequently, she decided against going to Cambridge University and continued on. Tormented from youth by self-esteem problems (she would spend years in therapy), it was hard to stay confident. With all her friends at college, she felt terribly alone. Furthermore, she was already being dangerously typecast as a period drama heroine. Keen to make a break from this, she took off to America and starred as Theresa, Don Johnson's junkie fiancee in Miami Vice. She got on well with Johnson's co-star Philip Michael Thomas, with whom she shares her birthday.

This statement made, further wing-spreading proved difficult. A Hazard Of Hearts saw her alongside Diana Rigg and Edward Fox as an aristocratic girl gambled away by her dice-a-holic father: then came The Vision with Eileen Atkins and Dirk Bogarde: then a cameo in public school drama Maurice. She was a tragic heroine again, as Ophelia in Mel Gibson's Hamlet, then came another Forster adaptation with Where Angels Fear To Tread, this time with Rupert Graves and Helen Mirren. Then ANOTHER Forster, with the superior Howard's End, which won an Oscar for Emma Thompson. All very, very English - even the one where the Australian played the Dane.

Throughout, Helena continued to take what unusual roles she was offered. She was the flamboyant, anorexic seducer Lady Minerva Munday in Getting It Right: she was the confused and fearful wife of Lee Harvey Oswald in Marina's Story (for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe): she even played a stripper, winning the heart of Rik Mayall in Dancing Queen. But there was no escape from period stuff - she just suited it too well - and next came one of the greats, Frankenstein (the book being one of the greats, not the film), where Helena revealed a quite stunning gothic look, only to have it spoiled when Robert De Niro's Monster literally knocked her head off her shoulders.

During the filming of Frankenstein, the star and director Kenneth Branagh was undergoing a painful separation from Emma Thompson. He and Helena got on well, and eventually began a relationship which would last till 1999. Unwilling to score any publicity or professional kudos from this, she would never talk about her personal life with Branagh, despite hundreds of journalistic proddings. Instead, she persisted in her efforts to depart from straight-laced period drama wherever possible. She was tortured by coal-mining disasters in Nova Scotia in Margaret's Museum: she did the complicated relationship thing in Portraits Chinois (speaking French, her mother's native tongue), which meant she couldn't play Desdemona in Branagh's Othello: and she married Woody Allen in Mighty Aphrodite. When, in 1998, she played her own grandmother, Violet, in a radio play, she did some research and discovered a postcard Violet had sent to her husband in 1911. It featured an odd-looking Italian hotel - by strange coincidence the one where Helena had stayed while filming with Allen.

Now maturing rapidly as an actress, Helena could return to period drama confident that she could bring more power to her roles, and avoid the shrinking violet tag. She played Olivia in Trevor Nunn's production of Twelfth Night, took on George Orwell's Keep The Aspidistra Flying and, most notably, played Kate Croy in Henry James' The Wings Of The Dove. Here she was tremendous as a manipulative young women attempting to keep her fortune and also a penniless lover she's been forbidden to see. Once again, she was nominated for a Golden Globe and, as proof positive of her massive progress, also gained an Oscar nomination. She took her mother to the ceremony, rather than Branagh and is typically good-humoured about her defeat by As Good As It Gets' Helen Hunt, saying "I'd won for the first two syllables".

Finally accepted as an actress, she threw herself into out-there roles with a vengeance. There was the dark laugh-fest of The Revengers' Comedies, where she meets Sam Neill on Tower Bridge, both about to jump. Instead they decide to take vengeance on those who've hurt the other. There was the aforementioned Theory Of Flight where she played a victim of motor neurone disease who wants Branagh to help her be deflowered before her death. And there was Merlin (with Neill again), where she played Morgan Le Fey to Miranda Richardson's superb, hissing Queen Mab, receiving nominations for both a Golden Globe and an Emmy. In the meantime, she finally moved out of her parents' house, and got a flat in Belsize Park, next door to producer Nellee Hooper, famed for his work with Bjork. She also rid herself of a frighteningly obsessive stalker who once called her 16 times in one minute.

Now came a major breakthrough. Fight Club was her first blockbuster, her first "girlfriend role", as she calls it. Here she was the fabulously neurotic Marla Singer, who meets Ed Norton at a testicular cancer group and engages in an affair with Brad Pitt, in the midst of which she performs the loudest and most hilarious orgasm since Meg Ryan's in When Harry Met Sally - scandalous behaviour for an English rose. Then came the rough, Edinburgh-set Women Talking Dirty: the scary, animated Carnivale: and Burton's Planet Of The Apes, where she helps out marooned astronaut Mark Wahlberg and is quite evidently not trading on her looks (an occasional accusation - she did in fact model Yardley cosmetics, briefly, in 1995, but quit because she hated it so). After that will come Novocaine, where she seduces dentist Steve Martin into prescribing her drugs. While filming, having now split from Branagh, she had a fling with Martin but found the 21-year age difference too much. Martin, who'd had thoughts of marriage, was devastated.

Whether Helena Bonham Carter will rise to even greater heights in Hollywood is debateable. She jokes that her short-sightedness (she wears lenses, or glasses) has caused her to ignore many a high-powered celebrity when they've attempted to introduce themselves, thus limiting her potential for advancement. Also, she's quite clearly drawn to low-budget projects that interest her - not a characteristic of many superstars. But that's Helena. Having spent a decade and a half battling against that English Rose thing, she's not giving up the fight now, even though it's already won. The girl got good - there can no longer be any argument.