ALICE IN WONDERLAND
HP: DEATHLY HALLOWS PT I
Helena Bonham Carter fancies a drink. So she orders a double espresso. And a glass of fizzy water. And an apple smoothie. She looks rather worried when I order just a coffee. “Is that all you want?” she asks gently. Multiple drinking, she explains, is the way to a balanced diet. She admits her theory is not based on pure science.
We are in the cafe just down the road from her north London home. She says she’s got something to show me, and produces a freaky cardboard cutout of a little woman with a huge, hydroencephalised head. “I’ve brought myself. It’s me… in Alice.” Alice In Wonderland is the latest movie she has made with her partner, director Tim Burton. This is their sixth collaboration, and possibly the grandest (it’s certainly the most expensive, at an estimated $250m). It’s classic Burton territory – a fairytale world where adulthood is never quite attained, and innocence trails a ghoulish stench. Bonham Carter is playing nasty – a cross between the Red Queen and the Queen of Hearts. She holds up her cardboard self and addresses it. “She’s got Tourette’s. She just says, ‘Off with their heads!’ all the time.”
Bonham Carter has not yet seen the film. No one has. It’s a closely guarded secret. But then, you won’t get far asking her about any film she’s been in. In recent years, she has boycotted them. She can’t stand watching herself. Nor can Johnny Depp, Burton’s prettier alter ego, who plays the Mad Hatter in Alice. “Johnny doesn’t watch anything he’s in. That’s slightly comforting. You think if Johnny Depp can’t watch himself…”
You don’t look your best in Alice, I say. “No, I can never rely on Tim to make me pretty.”
