Helena Bonham Carter

In Fight Club (1999), Helena Bonham Carter's Marla Singer finds the men's certainty about themselves a considerable nuisance. David Fincher's film needs her impatience, particularly when its speeches begin to repeat themselves. We felt relieved when her awkward dealings with the narrator gave us a reason to care beyond the next provocation. She makes dealing with another person look difficult without making it seem pointless. The satire remains engrossing, but her presence helps when the film starts to seem satisfied with finding another way to offend.

A Room with a View (1985) and Lady Jane (1986) established her in period leads. Work with James Ivory and Ismail Merchant, including Howards End (1992), kept her closely associated with literary adaptations. That became a restriction on how she was cast. The Wings of the Dove (1997) offered a more complex period character before Marla supplied a contemporary break. It would be unfair to dismiss the earlier work simply because the later parts look less respectable.

Her frequent work with Tim Burton began in 2001, with the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland (2010) one example of their fantasy collaborations. Bellatrix Lestrange in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) belongs to the same broad appetite for extravagant villains. The intensity suits her, but the risk is that eccentricity becomes all a part asks of her. Her understated work in The King's Speech (2010) deserves attention alongside those much louder parts.

In James Hawes's One Life (2023), she has the more practical task of getting visas out of reluctant officials. As Babi Winton, Nicholas Winton's mother, she marches through the Home Office demanding action from men who would rather she went away. Her determination works because there is something specific to accomplish, and she makes the officials' reluctance worth pushing against. It is an effective supporting turn in a film whose plain telling too often becomes flat. She cannot make the Prague scenes less ordinary, but there is pleasure in watching her insist that the paperwork gets done.

Start with Fight Club if you know her chiefly from the fantasy films. Its speeches require some patience. We would happily exchange a few of them for more time with Marla.