HELENA BONHAM CARTER

With her classical good looks and regal demeanor, it's not hard to image that Helena Bonham Carter is of noble pedigree. Her great-grandfather, Herbert Henry Asquith, was Britain's prime minister from 1908 to 1916, and it was this lineage which made it possible for her to attend private schools.
      Sister to two older brothers, Thomas and Edward, Helena found her calling at the tender age of five when visiting a friend, who as it turned out, was an actress. By thirteen, Bonham Carter was performing in school plays and had won a national poetry contest. It was around that time that illness struck the family without warning when her father, Raymond, suffered a stroke in the aftermath of a brain tumor operation. Although Helena diligently helped her mother in the care of her father, she also continued to persue her acting career. Three years after the tragedy, Helena landed her first role in a 1982 British TV movie.
      After graduating from London's Westminster School, she decided to passed up on attenting Cambridge University, opting instead to play the teenage Queen in Lady Jane, directed by Trevor Nunn. But American audiences came to know her in the critically acclaimed Merchant/Ivory production of A Room With A View.
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