HELENA JOINS THE HOUSE OF TWINDSOR
... or why, as she stars as The Crown’s Princess Margaret, it’s the role Bonham Carter was born to play
PrINCeSS Margaret is surely the role Helena Bonham Carter was born to play. and soon she will be on screen as the Queen’s sister in the Crown.
Pictures released this week by Netflix show Helena, 53, looking fully at ease under a replica tiara, opposite Oscar-winner Olivia Colman as the Queen.
Helena replaces Vanessa Kirby in the series, which will cover events from 1964 to 1977, and be screened from November.
What unites well-connected Bonham Carter with her royal doppelganger? Superficially there is so much — a handspan waist, skin as pale as cream, and eyes which radiate a dangerous mischief.
Party-loving Princess Margaret — for decades the showbiz wing of the House of Windsor — was just 5ft 1in, and Bonham Carter is a mere half inch taller (she sighs over her short legs in interviews).
Both developed a quirky personal style which is sometimes celebrated and sometimes derided. they share a love of hats, gloves, dark glasses and diamonds — and big hair. More significantly, both have suffered a succession of failed love affairs, and bitter heartbreaks. ALISON BOSHOFF has the story of the ties that bind . . .
THE DOOMED ROMANCES WITH MARRIED MEN
PRINCESS Margaret’S heartbreak over group Captain Peter townsend — the married equerry whose love she had to renounce — is well known.
Helena Bonham Carter has also had cause to bitterly regret her entanglement in her 20s with a married man, actor Kenneth Branagh. Branagh divorced wife emma thompson after he and Helena fell for each other on the set of the film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in 1994, but the romance was fraught and complicated, and came to an end in 1999.
emma thompson, who married actor greg Wise in 2003, said that she had drawn on the heartbreak of the situation when playing the famous scene in Love actually where she discovers her husband has cheated on her.
She said: ‘that scene where my character is standing by the bed crying is so well known because it’s something everyone’s been through.
‘I had my heart very badly broken by Ken. So I knew what it was like to find the necklace that wasn’t meant for me.’ In another interview she said she had made peace with Helena.
She said: ‘You can’t hold on to anything like that. It’s pointless. I haven’t got the energy for it. Helena and I made our peace years and years ago.’
In 1953, Peter townsend divorced his first wife and asked Princess Margaret, then only 22, to marry him. She accepted — but the Queen asked her to wait a year so that she could complete a post-Coronation tour of the Commonwealth.
For two years, the scandal dragged on with Prime Minister Winston Churchill arguing that Margaret should be removed from the line of succession.
a proposal was produced to this effect which would have allowed her to keep her royal title, duties and civil list allowance.
But shortly afterwards, in October 1955, Margaret — who died in 2002, aged 71 — issued a statement which ran: ‘I would like it to be known that I have decided not to marry group Captain Peter townsend. I have been aware that, subject to my renouncing my rights of succession, it might have been possible for me to contract a civil marriage. But mindful of the Church’s teachings that Christian marriage is indissoluble, and conscious of my duty to the Commonwealth, I have resolved to put these considerations before others.
‘I have reached this decision entirely alone, and in doing so I have been strengthened by the unfailing support and devotion of group Captain townsend.’
A PENCHANT FOR TOY BOYS
THE Princess scandalised the world by taking handsome landscape gardener roddy Llewellyn, 17 years her junior, as a lover in the mid-Seventies. the Princess was introduced to roddy in 1973 on Mustique by Colin tennant. In 1976 a picture of the pair in their swimsuits was published and soon after she and Lord Snowdon acknowledged that their marriage was over. they were divorced in 1978.
Helena Bonham Carter is dating a Danish writer, rye Dag Holmboe, who is 21 years younger than her. the two of them are thought to have met at a mutual friend’s wedding over the summer of 2018 and have been an item since October of that year. this May they were seen hugging and kissing in New York on a romantic getaway to celebrate her birthday.
PEERLESS FAMILY CONNECTIONS
Margaret was the younger daughter of george VI and Queen elizabeth the Queen Mother. When george’s elder brother King edward VIII abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, her father became King.
Helena Bonham Carter comes from a prominent political family and her great grandfather was Herbert asquith, the Liberal Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916.
Her uncle, Mark, was a publisher, Liberal politician and via his position as the governor of the royal Ballet, a friend of Princess Margaret’s. Helena said: ‘My uncle was actually very close to her. She was
pretty scary. At one point, she met me at Windsor Castle and she said: “You are getting better, [at acting] aren’t you?’ ” Helena’s father, Raymond, was a merchant banker and represented the Bank of England at the IMF. Her mother is Spanish, the daughter of diplomats, and a psychotherapist. Helena is friends with David and Samantha Cameron, having got to know the former Prime Minister when he was working at Carlton TV. She is also a distant cousin of Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge. She said in an interview: ‘I’m posh, but not that posh!’ She added: ‘I’m not sure which I’m more terrified about — doing justice to the real Princess Margaret or following in the shoes of Vanessa Kirby’s Princess Margaret.’
SEMI-DETACHED MARRIAGES
HELENA and Tim Burton never married, but were together for 13 years, six films, and two children, Billy and nell. Famously they lived in two adjoining houses in north london, with Helena explaining that this was the ideal solution because he snored and she talked in her sleep. Her house apparently looked like something out of Beatrix Potter, while his was decorated with ‘aliens lights’ and ‘skeletons.’ A corridor linked the two.
She said in an interview: ‘We did find each other. And really, the mark of a successful relationship shouldn’t be whether you’re there forever after. Sometimes you’re not meant to be forever together. Sometimes you have to come to terms with the fact — that was it. But that was a massive gift. We gave each other children and a lot more.’
Princess Margaret was married to photographer lord (Tony) Snowdon from 1960 to 1978 and they had children David and Sarah. The marriage disintegrated in the mid-Sixties, and some blamed Snowdon’s commitment to work, which led to separations from his wife.
Biographer Anne de Courcy said: ‘Margaret’s template of marriage was quite different from Tony’s. He had parents who split, while her parents’ and sister’s marriage were very happy. He had a workshop in the basement of Kensington Palace, and while she was understanding of his work commitments, Margaret didn’t realise it would take him away from her so much.’
Snowdon started to have casual flings while away on assignment and in 1969 had an affair with lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs, which upset Margaret greatly.
Ben Daniels, who plays Snowdon in The Crown, said: ‘They’re such extraordinary people, completely addicted to each other. Right up until the minute they were getting divorced, they still had a strong physical relationship. People often said it was like foreplay for them, having a row. They’d have these huge rows and then amazing sex.’
THEIR SUPERSTAR SHOWBIZ FRIENDS
BOTH women are at home with superstars — Johnny Depp is godfather to both of Helena’s children. Margaret famously moved in circles which included actors Peter Sellers and David niven and Mick Jagger — and is said to have had romances with Sellers, niven and even Warren Beatty.