'How I blagged my big break': Helena Bonham Carter reveals how copying her classmate’s work led to the start of her career
- Helena Bonham Carter has revealed the start of her career was due to 'a blag'
- A poem based on pupil's work led to a £25 prize which was spent on headshots
Helena Bonham Carter has revealed the start of her career was due to 'a blag' – after she copied a classmate's literary work.
The Harry Potter and Sweeney Todd star said a poem she wrote aged 13 that won a WH Smith writing competition was based on a sketch by a fellow pupil.
She used the £25 winnings to get a photographer to take her picture, which she put in actors' directory Spotlight.
It led to her big break as Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with A View in 1985.
Helena Bonham Carter has revealed the start of her career was due to 'a blag' – after she copied a classmate's literary work
The Harry Potter and Sweeney Todd star said a poem she wrote aged 13 that won a WH Smith writing competition was based on a sketch by a fellow pupil. She used the £25 winnings to get a photographer to take her picture, which she put in actors' directory Spotlight
Ms Bonham Carter, whose father had a stroke at the time of the contest, told The Times: 'I won. But I cribbed.
'Harriet Hill had done a really clever sketch about how rumours got out of hand – it was about gossip – and so I just kind of stole it and put it in a poem instead. Harriet didn't like it.
'I should have been honest. Look, we all steal. I just changed the medium. It was legit. But I was a child. And dad was ill, and I just had this moment of realising,
'OK, a terrible thing has happened. I'm mistress of my own destiny now'.'
Ms Bonham Carter stars as Crossroads actress Noele Gordon in ITV's Nolly, airing next month.
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