Helena Bonham Carter Felt Kissing Johnny Depp in ‘Sweeney Todd’ Was a Strange Situation
Johnny Depp once collaborated alongside Helena Bonham Carter in the Tim Burton feature Sweeney Todd. But one sequence required Carter to get a bit too close with her co-star. And it seemed to bother Carter more than it bothered Burton.
How Helena Bonham Carter reacted to kissing Johnny Depp
Carter played Depp’s accomplice in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Although Carter and Burton were married at the time, Burton was skeptical about casting his significant other in the film. Sweeney Todd was a dark musical, and Burton wasn’t convinced Carter had the voice to pull off her character’s melodies. Still, she gave his wife an opportunity like he would any other actor, refusing special treatment.
“I mean he told me: ‘You look right for it but we have no idea if you can sing,'” Carter recalled to IGN. “So I thought: ‘well, I’ll try and learn’ and did singing lessons, but you know I had to be righter than right. I wouldn’t want people saying I got a role in his film just because I slept with him. At the end of the day Sondheim said I was okay… and I definitely didn’t sleep with him!”
After Carter proved herself to be the right choice, she had to do more than just a duet with Depp. Carter and Depp’s partnership in the film would take a romantic approach, which she confided wasn’t all that uncomfortable. Although, in hindsight, she did find the idea a bit odd.
“Maybe it should have been? No… The fact I was being paid by my boyfriend to romance his best friend – it was I guess a strange situation but no I didn’t worry about it,” she said.
‘Sweeney Todd’ was the only time Helena Bonham Carter felt argumentative with her ex Tim Burton
Tempers couldn’t help but flare between the Batman director and Carter on set. According to Carter, it was the first time the couple had a real argument with each other.
“I’d never sung before, he had never done a musical and it’s that classic thing that you take your stress out on the person who you know best and we really didn’t get on during that one,” Carter said on the Grounded with Louis Theroux podcast. “Amazingly I got pregnant, but let’s not get into that.”
Carter found a way to circumvent their tension by turning to Depp, who acted as a mediator between the two.
“Johnny was caught in the middle,” she said. “In the end I realized I shouldn’t really have any good ideas. If I had a good idea I should give it to Johnny. If I gave it to Johnny, Johnny would mention it to Tim and then it was a marvelous idea. If I mentioned it it would be an absolutely crap idea. We worked our way through it.”
How Tim Burton changed Helena Bonham Carter’s acting
Despite their squabbles, Burton and Carter got along well enough to work together quite a few times. Alice in Wonderland and Dark Shadows were just some of their many collaborations. During their time together, Carter discovered that Burton actually helped her grow as an actor.
“He’s made me more aware. He thinks I overact all the time. He’s got a thing about me having a very mobile face. Tim has often said I’ve got hyperactive eyebrows – he calls them the dancing caterpillars. He’s all for minimal expression. He likes to simplify things, I complicate them. I think we can do this or this or this, optionitis, then I get frozen because I don’t know which one,” Carter once told The Guardian.
But the influence wasn’t one-sided, and she believed she helped Burton grow in some ways as well.
“People who know him say I have, and I feel really flattered. Made him talk more. He didn’t really talk before. He’s much shyer than me. Every sentence was unfinished. I used to say he was a home for abandoned sentences. Now he actually finishes them,” she said.
