Helena Bonham Carter
Usually I'm frustrated when I look at my films and I don't believe that I've made a real transformation beyond my usual sets of gestures and expressions. I still have this nagging feeling that it's me, that I didn't create a unique character.
I enjoy those small chats you have when people come up and talk to you about your work. It only involves a few seconds of effort to be nice to those people, and I am very grateful for the kind words that people have taken the trouble to express to me in person.
The problems come when your personal life and relationships come under scrutiny in the press and often very uncomplimentary things are printed about you.
I'm the kind of actor who has ventured into escaping from me.
I also get fed up with the fact that casting agents and directors have this impression of me as being frail and petite. I find it very patronizing. I'm quite beefy and strong. I was a gymnast in school and I have lots of muscles.
I have to struggle to change people's perceptions of me. I grew very frustrated with the perception that I'm this shy, retiring, inhibited aristocratic creature when I'm absolutely not like that at all. I think I'm much more outgoing and exuberant than my image.
I love changing what I look like because I always feel super strange whenever I do watch something that I'm in.
Journalists are always calling my features Edwardian or Victorian, whatever that means. I am small, and people were smaller in those times. I'm pale and sickly-looking. I look fragile-like a doll. But sometimes I just wish I had less of a particular look, one that was more versatile.
People have lots of misconceptions about me. My mum, who is half French and half Spanish, gets outraged when I'm called quintessentially English. I owe my looks to my mum-which was 90 percent of getting my first job. And, some people would argue, 90 percent of my entire career.
You become very angry and depressed that you keep getting offered only these exceedingly demure and repressed roles. They're so not me. That's why films like Fight Club were so important to me because I think I confounded certain stereotypes and limited perceptions of what I could do as an actress.
The animators are absolutely extraordinary. It's mind-boggling.
I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art.Collection: Life
Who wants to be normal when you can be unique?Collection: Unique
Why do you put your self esteem in the hands of complete strangers?Collection: Trust
Imperfection is underrated. Perfection is overrated.Collection: Perfection
You just have to do what suits you, and it doesn't matter if you don't look like everybody else. Be you. That's our gift and we've got to celebrate that.Collection: Suits You
Be yourself. No one else can.Collection: Being Yourself
Wear what you feel comfortable with. People say nasty things about what I wear in the street. I'm always in worst dressed lists, but you just have to dress for yourself and nobody else.Collection: People
I’ve aged, but I don’t think I’ve grown up.Collection: Thinking
I always feel better after a good scream.Collection: Feel Better
I just want to give you this one piece of advice: if you're standing and you could be sitting, sit. If you're sitting and you could be lying down, lie down.Collection: Lying
I just thought I‘d never look good in what everybody else wore. So there’s no point trying. You just have to do what suits you, and it doesn’t matter if you don’t look like everybody else. Be you. That’s our gift and we’ve got to celebrate that, but it does take ages. I was wracked with self-doubt for years. I get spasms of it even now – I’m not indelibly self-confident.Collection: Suits You
Everyone seems to think I'm very ladylike. That I'm very cultured and intelligent. I drink alot of Diet Coke and belch. I've been known to use the F-word. I've told a few dirty jokes. I arm-wrestle.Collection: Dirty
His mouth is a no-go area. It's like kissing the Berlin Wall.Collection: Cute
People say, "You're still breast-feeding, that's so generous". Generous, no! It gives me boobs and it takes my thighs away! It's sort of like natural liposuction. I'd carry on breast-feeding for the rest of my life if I could.Collection: People
I do think imperfection's underrated.Collection: Thinking
Sometimes I go, “What am I doing with my life?” But then I get letters from young women, or people come up to me, and they say, “You’ve made such a difference to my confidence.” And that is a good thing. I should read more fan mail though. I’m crap at responding.Collection: Differences
Sometimes I get it right and I sometimes I get it wrong. But fashion is all about having fun. I think fashion has been hijacked by the fashion industry creating rules on what one should wear and I feel like breaking the mold and seeing that the world won’t crumble.Collection: Fashion
I remember I did think, 'Wouldn't it be nice if Mr Right moved in next door?'Collection: Nice
I love movies where people see the world from a different angle.Collection: People
Very early on, you figure out that you put your self esteem in the hands of strangers. There's a different commodity. There's the Helena Bonham Carter that everyone thinks they know, who really has nothing to do with me. But you just have to let that go.Collection: Self Esteem
No matter how many modern parts I do, people still refer to me as Mrs. Costume Drama.Collection: Drama
To understand how you live, to live. Do not think about it and live with it.Collection: Thinking
When it comes to acting, people talk about the suspension of disbelief that you ask of the audience. Before that starts, you have to, as an actor, suspend your own disbelief.Collection: People
On corsets: I said, You have got to be kidding. I am an ape and yet I am still expected to squeeze myself into one of those damn things.Collection: Apes
Maybe from now on puppets can do the partsCollection: Puppets
It feels like a rash. It suddenly seems like I've got a contagion of diseases, I mean awards. But it's nice, it's a nice feeling. It's so weird, because I'm only 46. A lifetime Achievement award... it feels like 'I'm not over yet'. I hope they're not trying to say it's time to stop. I'm only just getting the gist of it.Collection: Nice
I'm suffering from stage fright. I don't like making speeches. [...] I'm the kind of introvert actor who likes putting on other people's clothes and pretending to be somebody else, which is completely crazy choice of profession. So, I don't enjoy public speaking and I have every sympathy for anyone who has to do it and doesn't enjoy it.Collection: Crazy
There is no normality in life. Having two houses means that we can get out of each other's hair - which, let's face it, we've both got a lot of.Collection: Mean
I’m more comfortable with myself than when I was younger. I hated myself then. Wait, I didn’t hate myself – that’s a strong word. But I was so diffident. I didn’t know how to act, for one. I had no confidence in that area or in myself at all, really. I had a big inner critic and still do. I just don’t listen to it so much.Collection: Strong
And trust. It takes a long time to trust someone. You work with people, anybody you dont know, it takes about a films length to get to know each other. Then if you move on, you have to start right back at the beginning. But if you carry on together and try doing different things, you can all grow together.Collection: Moving
Am I a good example? Well, at least I'm not too thin. I eat.Collection: Example
I'm convinced that whatever state you're in during your pregnancy has a huge influence on the baby's personality - so I hope we haven't produced a little serial killer!Collection: Baby
I think Woody Allen is pretty much of a genius. I'm thinking of filmmakers every century or two, but I've never had the luck to meet them. People who create their absolutely own world and are totally inimitable.Collection: Thinking
When I was young I had so many inferiority complexes. I had an inferiority complex because I didn’t go to university. I had an inferiority complex because I didn’t train. Then it gets tiring. And you do get bored of it.Collection: Bored
Falling in love with him was completely unexpected. When you only see someone as a friend, you don’t expect anything else. There was definitely a moment when something quite magical happened and we both agree that it transformed our relationship.Collection: Falling In Love
The thing about the Oscars is real life doesn't stop. You have to get back to planet Earth the following morning. The rubbish needs taking out. The kids will be crying. They'll need feeding. Kids do not care whether you've been to the Oscars!Collection: Morning
I had never had any experience of autism before and I would come home and look at my son, Billy, who is now two, and be absolutely paranoid, particularly because he loves Thomas the Tank Engine, and lots of autys love Thomas. But he is not very good at pointing, and autistic children absolutely love pointing.Collection: Children
I actually pointed my wand and it blew up! The power! The power was just like Angry Birds, but big [as] life.Collection: Bird