How can anyone forget the scene in Love Actually, where Emma Thompson’s Karen was not all acting, instead living her real life, discovering her husband in the flick having a dirty business with her secretary?
Apparently, in real life, something similar happened to her in the past when her long-time beau Kenneth Branagh cheated her with Helena Bonham Carter.
Who Is Helena Bonham Carter?
Helena Bonham Carter is an English actress who is famed for her roles in independent films and blockbusters, especially period dramas. Moreover, she has several accolades under her belt including an International Emmy Award, and a British Academy Award on top of nominations for four British Academy Television Awards, two Academy Awards, nine Golden Globe Awards, and five Primetime Emmy Awards.
When Did Helena Bonham Carter Big Break Happen?
Helena Bonham Carter came into the limelight by playing Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View in 1985 and as her title character in Lady Jane in 1986. Initially, she was typecast as a virginal “English rose”, a tag she was completely uncomfortable with.
Helena Bonham Carter is also better known for often playing quirky women, and her dark aesthetic as well as for her eccentric fashion. For her role as Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother in The King’s Speech (2010), Helena Bonham Carter won the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in Supporting Role, and for her portrayal of Kate Roy in The Wings of the Dove (1997), she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
What Are The Other Films of Helena Bonham Carter?
For almost 3 decades from the 1990s, Helena Bonham Carter was a sought-after actress and has been a part of roughly more than 20 flicks including Howards End, Hamlet, Fight Club, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Mighty Aphrodite, Great Expectations, Ocean’s 8, Cinderella, Enola Holmes, Les Miserables and she also played Bellatrix Lestrange in Warner Bros’ Harry Potter series.
Additionally, Helena Bonham Carter’s notable collaborations with her former domestic partner, Tim Burton, include Corpse Bride, Big Fish, Alice in Wonderland, Red Queen, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Dark Shadows, and Mrs. Lovett.
For her popular role as Enid Blyton in the BBC Four biographical film Enid, which was released in 2009, Helena Bonham Carter was nominated for the British Academy Television Award for Best Actress and won International Emmy Award for Best Actress in 2010.
Emma Thompson’s Ex-Husband Kenneth Branagh’s Affair With Helena Bonham Carter
The cheating partner trope in Love Actually witnessed Emma Thompson grin. It led to a revelation, where Thompson pointed out that the plot was not something usual, but it was a lot related to her personal life and experiences she had in the past.
She has literally cemented the heart-wrenching scene in the minds of the audience for years and it was likely because she was very much crushed on the inside as the storyline was nothing new to her original self.
Back then, people appreciated her excellent acting credentials, unaware of why her portrayal was so perfect. It’s because she based it on her marriage and her own experience.
In fact, Emma recently admitted that the tears that fell onto her cheeks were so persuasive as her heart was badly broken at the time. After 8 years of marriage, she discovered that her former husband, Kenneth Branagh was having a secret relationship with Helena Bonham Carter, who played his love interest in his adaptation of Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein.
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Earlier in November 2022, Emma spoke candidly about being “blinded” in an interview with the NewYorker.
“I was completely blind to the fact that he (Kenneth) had relationships with other women,” she said, referring to his infidelity. She added what she learned from the devastating experience was that it was easy to get blinded by one’s own desire to deceive oneself.
“I was half alive” and she apparently lost the sense of being worthy or lovable in its entirety. Indeed, she credited Greg Wise, her husband who literally picked up the pieces and arranged them back together.
Speaking of the affair, she said, “That scene where my character (Karen) is seen crying beside the bed is so well known” as she thinks it’s something everyone has gone through at one point in their lives.
“I had my heart broken badly by Ken, so I knew exactly what it meant to find a necklace (in his pocket) that wasn’t meant for me.”
Having said that, she made it clear why the scene was so tear-jerking.
It is not the first time she is opening up about Kenneth’s infidelity, for Ekma had previously talked about the same in a 2013 interview with The Sunday Times, where she disclosed that she had ‘made peace’ with Ken’s mistress, Helena Bonham Carter, after dubbing the relationship as “all blood under the bridge.”
“You can’t hold on to a single thing for a long time. It’s pointless,” Emma professed. “I do not have the energy for it,” and thus eventually they “made peace years ago.”
She also proved that there were no such hard feelings, adding that she could see why Ken liked both of them, quipping; the woman was slightly mad and a bit fashion-provoked. She added that “perhaps” those were the reasons why he was attracted to both of them.
The statement came immediately after Emma and Helena Bonham Carter acted together in Harry Potter films as Bellatrix Lestrange, and Professor Sybil Trelawney respectively. While the former was cast in the final four films from 2007 to 2011, the latter was in the second, fifth, and eighth films.
But what was more interesting was Emma’s on-screen painting with her ex-husband Kenneth in the second film- Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets.