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Helena Bonham Carter is an actress of great versatility, one of the UK's finest and most successful.

Bonham Carter was born May 26, 1966 in Golders Green, London, England, the youngest of three children of Elena (née Propper de Callejón), a psychotherapist, and Raymond Bonham Carter, a merchant banker. Through her father, she is the great-granddaughter of former Prime Minister Herbert H. Asquith, and her blue-blooded family tree also contains Barons and Baronesses, diplomats, and a director, Bonham Carter's great-uncle Anthony Asquith, who made Pygmalion (1938) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1952), among others. Cousin Crispin Bonham-Carter is also an actor. Her maternal grandfather, Eduardo Propper de Callejón, was a Spanish diplomat who was awarded the honorific Righteous Among the Nations, by Israel, for helping save Jews during World War II (Eduardo's own father was a Czech Jew). Helena's maternal grandmother, Hélène Fould-Springer, was from an upper-class Jewish family from France, Austria, and Germany, and later converted to her husband's Catholic faith.

Bonham Carter experienced family dramas during her childhood, including her father's stroke - which left him wheelchair-bound. She attended South Hampstead High School and Westminster School in London, and subsequently devoted herself to an acting career. That trajectory actually began in 1979 when, at age thirteen, she entered a national poetry writing competition and used her second place winnings to place her photo in the casting directory "Spotlight." She soon had her first agent and her first acting job, in a commercial, at age sixteen. She then landed a role in the made-for-TV movie A Pattern of Roses (1983), which subsequently led to her casting in the Merchant Ivory films A Room with a View (1985), director James Ivory's tasteful adaptation of E.M. Forster's novel, and Lady Jane (1986), giving a strong performance as the uncrowned Queen of England. She had roles in three other productions under the Merchant-Ivory banner (director Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala): an uncredited appearance in Maurice (1987), and large roles in Where Angels Fear to Tread (1991) and Howards End (1992).

Often referred to as the "corset queen" or "English rose" because of her early work, Bonham Carter continued to surprise audiences with magnificent performances in a variety of roles from her more traditional corset-clad character in The Wings of the Dove (1997) and Shakespearian damsels to the dark and neurotic anti-heroines of Fight Club (1999). Her acclaimed performance in The Wings of the Dove (1997) earned her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination, a Golden Globe Best Actress nomination, a BAFTA Best Actress nomination, and a SAG Awards Best Actress nomination. It also won her a Best Actress Award from the National Board of Review, the Los Angeles Film Critics, the Boston Society Film Critics, the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Texas Society of Film Critics, and the Southeastern Film Critics Association.

In the late 1990s, Bonham Carter embarked on the next phase of her career, moving from capable actress to compelling star. Audiences and critics had long been enchanted by her delicate beauty, evocative of another time and place. Her late '90s and early and mid 2000s roles included Mick Jackson's Live from Baghdad (2002), alongside Michael Keaton, receiving a nomination for both an Emmy and a Golden Globe; Paul Greengrass' The Theory of Flight (1998), in which she played a victim of motor neurone disease; Trevor Nunn's Twelfth Night (1996), in which she played Olivia; opposite Woody Allen in his Mighty Aphrodite (1995); Mort Ransen's Margaret's Museum (1995); Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein (1994); and Franco Zeffirelli's Hamlet (1990).

Other notable credits include her appearance with Steve Martin in Novocaine (2001), Tim Burton's remake of Planet of the Apes, in which she played an ape, Thaddeus O'Sullivan's The Heart of Me (2002), opposite Paul Bettany, and Big Fish (2003), her second effort with Tim Burton, in which she appeared as a witch.

In between her films, Helena has managed a few television appearances, which include her portrayal of Jacqui Jackson in Magnificent 7 (2005), the tale of a mother struggling to raise seven children - three daughters and four autistic boys; as Anne Boleyn in the two-parter biopic of Henry VIII starring Ray Winstone; and as Morgan Le Fey, alongside Sam Neill and Miranda Richardson, in Merlin. Earlier television appearances include Michael Mann's Miami Vice (1984) as Don Johnson's junkie fiancée, and as a stripper who wins Rik Mayall's heart in Dancing Queen (1993). Helena has also appeared on stage, in productions of Trelawney of the Wells, The Barber of Seville, House of Bernarda Alba, The Chalk Garden, and Woman in White.

Bonham Carter was nominated for a Golden Globe for the fifth time for her role in partner Tim Burton's film adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), for which Burton and co-star Johnny Depp were also nominated. For the role, she was awarded Best Actress at the Evening Standard British Film Awards 2008. Other 2000s work includes playing Mrs Bucket in Tim Burton's massive hit Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), providing the voices for the aristocratic Lady Campanula Tottington in Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and for the eponymous dead heroine in Tim Burton's spooky Corpse Bride (2005), and co-starring in Conversations with Other Women (2005) opposite Aaron Eckhart.

After their meeting while filming Planet of the Apes (2001), Bonham Carter and Tim Burton made seven films together. They lived in adjoining residences in London, shared a connecting hallway, and have two children: Billy Ray Burton, born in 2003, and Nell Burton, who was born in 2007. Ironically, a mutual love of Sweeney Todd was part of the initial attraction for the pair. Bonham Carter has said in numerous interviews that her audition process for the role of Mrs. Lovett was the most grueling of her career and that, ultimately, it was Sondheim who she had to convince that she was right for the role.

Anya Lahiri was born on 1 May 1982 in Golders Green, London, England, UK. She is an actress, known for Goal! III (2009), Swinging with the Finkels (2011) and Nature Unleashed: Tornado (2005).

Ingpen [née Williams], Joan Mary Eileen (1916-2007), musicians' agent and opera administrator, was born on 3 January 1916 at 5 Beverley Gardens, Golders Green, London, the daughter of John Hamilton Williams, civil engineer, and his wife, Daisy, née Howe. In 1919 her father was sent to Russia, reputedly to try to help the tsar and his family, but he disappeared without trace and was presumed dead.

Joan Williams studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, becoming an excellent pianist, but she did not feel good enough for a professional career. Instead she learned to type and worked in marine insurance. During the Second World War, however, she became assistant to Walter Legge, the classical music director of ENSA, which provided entertainment for British troops. On 7 March 1942 she married Noman Edward Ingpen (1918-1961), a lieutenant in the Royal Horse Artillery (and son of Norman Cecil Ingpen, also an army officer). After the end of the war she helped Legge found the Philharmonia Orchestra, then in 1946 she founded her own concert agency, Ingpen and Williams. She divorced Ingpen (but kept his name professionally) and on 5 February 1948 she married Erich Alfred Diez (b. 1895/6), also a concert agent (and son of Friedrich Leo Diez, master tailor). The great German bass-baritone Hans Hotter was a witness at their wedding. This marriage also ended in divorce, and in 1958 Ingpen began a relationship with the actor Sebastian Lewis Shaw (1905-1994), son of Geoffrey Shaw, music teacher, which lasted until his death. She had no children.

Ingpen worked very hard to build a strong list at her agency. The singers she represented included Joan Sutherland and Geraint Evans, as well as Hotter, while among the conductors were Rudolf Kempe and Georg Solti. In 1961 Solti became music director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and asked Ingpen to join him as controller of opera planning. She accepted, sold her agency to Howard Hartog, and in 1962 moved to Covent Garden, where her knowledge of singers and their roles was soon put to good use. The tenor Giuseppe di Stefano was due to give six performances as Rodolfo in Puccini's La Bohème in 1963; as he was not in good health she engaged as cover the then unknown tenor Luciano Pavarotti, whom she had heard in Dublin; in the event di Stefano sang one performance, Pavarotti the other five, and she was credited with launching the latter's rise to fame.

Ingpen worked very closely with Solti during the decade he was at Covent Garden, and when he left so did she, taking up a new post as director of planning at the Paris Opéra in July 1971. As always, she began planning the season two years ahead, but though Ingpen got on well with the new managing director, the composer Rolf Liebermann, she found the bureaucracy of the state-funded Opéra extremely difficult to deal with. When, therefore, in 1978 she received a summons from the Metropolitan Opera in New York, she accepted immediately. In New York she had to work exceptionally hard, as the Met, unlike Covent Garden or the Paris Opéra, performed opera seven nights a week, with no evenings of ballet. She calculated that she had to cast 3000 singing roles a season, as well as covers of sufficient stature to go on in an emergency. She had a good working relationship with James Levine, the Met's musical director, but her insistence on planning so far ahead and her sometimes abrasive manner made her unpopular with the management. She stayed in New York for three seasons, until 1981.

For several years after her return, Ingpen became a talent spotter for the Met in Britain and continental Europe. She lived latterly in Hove and until his death with Sebastian Shaw, taking his name. She died at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton, on 29 December 2007, of bronchopneumonia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Michael Kustow was born on 18 November 1939 in Golders Green, London, England, UK. He was a producer and writer, known for Peter Brook's the Mahabharata (8K) (2024), Tell Me Lies (1968) and Pandaemonium (2000). He was married to Orna Spector and Lis Kustow. He died on 29 August 2014 in London, England, UK.

Alan Afriat was born in 1935 in Golders Green, London, England, UK. He was an editor and producer, known for The World at War (1973), The Setbacks (1980) and Casting Off (1988). He was married to Monica Taupin. He died in 2024 in the UK.

Myrtle Peter was born on 11 May 1912 in Golders Green, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Woman to Woman (1923), A Royal Divorce (1923) and Making Paper Money (1922). She was married to Leslie R Browning. She died in October 1992 in Kent, England, UK.

Betty Frankiss was born on 15 September 1912 in Golders Green, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Me and My Girl (1939), The Public Life of Henry the Ninth (1935) and The New Waiter (1930). She died in 1992 in Ramsey, Isle of Man, UK.