Carter no longer 'corset bimbo'

Reuters

NO BIMBO: Helena Bonham Carter with her partner, director Tim Burton.

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Helena Bonham Carter is thrilled she's no longer the "corset bimbo sex symbol".

The 43-year-old actress became synonymous with period dramas after her appearance in A Room With A View aged 19. She became known as a typical English rose, and was renowned for pulling herself into waist-cinching corsets and puffy skirts.

Helena began dating director Tim Burton in 2001, after they met when she appeared in his Planet of the Apes remake, and has since starred in many of his films. Roles in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Sweeney Todd mean she is now often thought of as a gothic actress, which she prefers.

"Ageing has helped hugely. There's no question I'm a better actor, and you leave behind a certain typecasting. I was like the corset bimbo. Well, not quite bimbo, but you know what I mean. The corset sex symbol, I suppose. Now I'm not going to be the sex symbol, I'm going to be the granny. Well, not quite granny," she explained.

Helena raises two children with Tim, and despite her figure altering after pregnancy she says she finally feels happy with it. Ageing has helped her accept her physique, another reason she is confident enough to portray unusual charters in Tim's films.

She plays The Red Queen in his eagerly-anticipate movie Alice in Wonderland, and is seen with a hugely oversized head. Helena laughed she can never rely on Tim to "make her look pretty" on screen, but is comfortable enough in her own skin to take on such parts.

"I feel more sexy than ever, not because I'm sexually attractive, I just feel I've grown into my body," she told British newspaper The Guardian. "I absolutely did not feel like this when I was younger. Totally uncomfortable. It took me ages to grow into being a woman, into being happy with it. When I was young, I believed in being androgynous, you can't flaunt it, you can't use it. The whole thing was just something yuck, to be ¬embarrassed about. And now it's just like, 'Hey, enjoy it!' Now I feel fine about shapes and things. It's nice to have curves. To be a woman."