Helena Bonham Carter endured nearly five hours of make-up daily for her role in the Tim Burton directed summer blockbuster Planet Of The Apes, a departure from the period pieces she’s best known for. However, for a time even Tim seemed eager to squeeze the British beauty back into a corset.
“My first costume had a corset,” says The Wings Of The Dove star. “I said, ‘You’re kidding. I’m an ape and you’re still putting me in corsets?’” The designers soon relented, and Helena was free to monkey around with the rest of the cast, which includes Oscar nominees Tim Roth and The Green Mile’s Michael Clarke Duncan.
To perfect their simian performances, Helena and the tribe enrolled in a six-week ape behaviour training camp. “Ape school was very illuminating,” she says. “At first I flunked because I was way too hyper. But there are lots of things in finding your inner ape that can be quite useful to one’s real life.”
And though getting into costume posed all sorts of problems – Helena initially encountered difficulty breathing under the mask and latex – her hairy digs soon became like a second skin. “You could be rude and disrespectful because no one could understand you,” she says. “The mask is a licence to misbehave.”
So, how real are the film’s costumes? Just ask star Mark Wahlberg.
“I almost had a heart attack the first day of shooting,” says the artist formerly known as Marky Mark. “We were standing on a hill, and I was looking down at my feet, and next to me I saw these big furry toes hanging out of these sandals. I looked up and there was this huge gorilla smiling at me. I had to run to the monitor and sit with Tim until I calmed down.”
Planet Of The Apes opens across the US on Friday before hitting UK screens on August 17. special feature
Photo: © Alphapress.com
Photo: © Alphapress.com
