Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Helena Bonham Carter has always been the type of woman people find eccentric. She, much like the characters she plays on screen, is someone who has a very particular and personal sense of style. She once said that if she could choose her own fashion icons, it would be a good mixture of the legendary Vivienne Westwood as well as the legendary Marie Antoinette. It’s a simple way of life for her. If she feels good about it, she likes it. She also tends to focus her life on the same motto. If it feels good to her, she’s in. However, there is a fascinating story about Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, and a man by the name of Kenneth Branagh. It’s an interesting story that involves marriage, an affair, and Harry Potter.
Emma Thompson Married Kenneth Branagh
His name might not be overly familiar to many, but hers is. She’s one of the single most talented actresses in the world. She’s Emma Thompson. She’s Nanny McPhee, and she is the mother of Cruella De Vil. She’s amazing. Thompson met Branagh in 1987. They were filming a television show together, and their romance was quick. They married in 1989. They were both quite famous in London at the time and worked substantially to keep their relationship and marriage out of the spotlight, but it didn’t happen. As Thompson began to grow more famous, her husband did not.
Kenneth Branagh Meets Helena Bonham Carter
In 1994, Helena Bonham Carter was working on Frankenstein. It was there that she met Kenneth Branagh, and it wasn’t long before the two began seeing one another in secret. She was aware he was married, and he was very aware that he was married. Surprisingly, the two managed to keep their affair a secret for some time. In 1995, Emma Thompson and her husband announced that they were ending their marriage under the guise of schedules that did not allow for a successful marriage. It did not take long after that for Helena Bonham Carter’s relationship with Branagh to come out – fans were shocked. Thompson fell into a depression that took her some time to get out of, and it was a massive scandal. Carter and Branagh remained romantically linked until 1999.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Helena Bonham Carter, Emma Thompson, and Kenneth Branagh Star in Harry Potter
Just when this love triangle seems to have ended, things get a little bit stranger. Following the end of all three relationships, these three were all cast in the Harry Potter series. We know that Helena Bonham Carter was aptly and perfectly cast as the horrible Bellatrix LeStrange – cousin to Sirius Black, who is the Godfather of Harry Potter. She’s mean, and she will do anything for Lord Voldemort. She first appears in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix – the fifth book and movie – and she is a big part of the cast through the end. But when was Emma Thompson in the Harry Potter Series?
Emma Thompson did what Emma Thompson does best – she played a character with some seriously out-there personality issues. She is Professor Sybill Trelawney. We meet her for the first time in the third movie – The Prisoner of Azkaban. We don’t see her again until Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and then again in the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Now, what about Kenneth Branagh? Where was he?
In Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Kenneth Branagh plays the insufferable Professor Gilderoy Lockhart. It’s the series’ second book, and he was part of the main cast. He likes his fame, he likes his fans, and he likes to speak very highly of himself.
Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures
Working Together Following This Affair
While Branagh did not star with either Thompson or Bonham Carter in any of the movies, these two did cross paths in two of the three movies in which Thompson was part of the cast. How was it working together? They would have both known the other was part of the cast, and, interestingly, Helena Bonham Carter would want to be part of the cast alongside Emma Thompson after stealing her husband from her. But the truth is that these two actresses are both professional and have nothing but kind things to say of one another.
“You can’t hold on to anything like that,” said Thompson in 2013 after saying that any issues she had with Helena Bonham Carter were “blood under the bridge.” She elaborated further by adding that she and Bonham Carter are “both slightly mad and a bit fashion-challenged. Perhaps that’s why Ken loved us both. She’s a wonderful woman, Helena.” It sounds as if Thompson no longer holds any grudges, and that’s a lovely thing to say. She’s always been an example of class and elegance. the mother of Cruella De Vil
Follow Us
