Helena Bonham Carter on Burton, Shrunken Heads

Helena Bonham Carter spoke with Lorraine Cwelich of NYMag's Vulture. You can read the full interview here, in whch she discusses many topics, such as the latest Harry Potter movie and the highly anticipated The King's Speech, in which she plays Queen Elizabeth. Here is the excerpt on Tim Burton:

So your husband, Tim Burton … actually, not your husband. How do you refer to Tim: your life partner, significant other, boyfriend?
I don’t know; I haven’t got a satisfactory word! Father of my bastards, perhaps?

Do you feel like he has a separate language with Johnny Depp than you share?
They definitely go back a long, long way. They have a lot to bond them apart from the fact that they’ve known each other so long and they’ve got an intuitive understanding of each other. And they have all that cultural reference that I have no idea about; they were brought up on the same diet of television and just culturally American. So most of the time I have no idea what they’re having a laugh about. And also there’s a lot of things that I just don’t find funny — boys’ humor. So Johnny and I sort of have our friendship separate from Tim and his relationship.

How do you two connect since you don’t have all those cultural references in common?
Well, he’s the godfather of our children, so pretty much just like two normal human beings. We have similar tastes in certain things; we like dressing up, camouflaging ourselves.

Do Tim and Johnny bring out the darker part of your personality?
No, they’re not really that dark.

Okay, Corpse Bride?
Maybe artistically they are. With Tim, when I saw some of his drawings, I was like, "Oh, Jesus, it’s a bit disturbing." And he said, "No, no, you’d be disturbed if I couldn’t draw." If you get rid of it, you exorcise it. It’s therapeutic. They’re very happy, smiling, shiny people! Especially since having children, they are.

Depp does have those John Wayne Gacy clown paintings …
Oh yeah, he’s got that stuff. And Tim’s got a few shrunken heads.

Actual shrunken heads?
Oh, yes.

You don’t mind them being in your house?
I’m not worried about the shrunken heads because I don’t know where they are, actually.


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