Attend the Tale: 'Sweeney Todd' Exclusive with Helena Bonham Carter

We wondered what her views were on Mrs. Lovett as a character.

Helena Bonham Carter: What I loved about it, and what's…you know she was so complex and she could have so many different colours and you could still play it billions of different ways.  That's always the exciting with a part that's well written is so many different ideas occur to you.  I think they're both victims in a way.  She's the most amoral – she's got no excuses for what she does.  He's obviously a victim given what's happened to him, so you can kind of justify his killing; you see a reason behind it – a powerlessness and he goes off the end.  She's immoral though it's not quite explained why she's…she's pretty mad and delusional herself.  That's her tragedy: she's in love with somebody who doesn't even notice her.

The character of Mrs. Lovett not only has incredibly difficult lyrical word play and tongue-twisters to take on, but difficult movement to undertake whilst singing.

Helena Bonham Carter: You had to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and rehearse it and practice it because…it's different: on stage you know you have to do it all in one; on film you know it's going to be cut around but because it's cut around you have to do it in continuity so you have to really learn it back to front to know when you're going to pick up the rolling pin and when you're going to smash the dough.  It's all written into the music; the pie making is written into the rhythm of the music and he actually…you know, all the off beats are smashing the pastry but it all had to be decided which beat I was going to role the pastry out and which beat was going to be what – and you obviously had to do it exactly the same every time you did it. So…it was hard.  I know that song – I could sing it.  The rhythms are all over but they're fascinating and once you start looking at it there's a reason for every single break-up of rhythm.  It's not all over the place.  It's really easy to learn in some ways because it's justified by its own logic and the thinking behind it, and there's always a reason for why it goes up and it all seems perverse and there's an off beat and it's all there.  In "Worse Pies," it's like a minute and a half you're in and you kind of know her already.  It's like bang – she's a chat-aholic…it's like a monologue. 

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DreamWorks Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures Presents a Parkes/MacDonald and Zanuck Company Production, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, directed by Tim Burton. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck, Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald and John Logan; Executive Producer Patrick McCormick.

Based on the Broadway musical with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by Hugh Wheeler; originally staged by Harold Prince. From an adaptation by Christopher Bond, screenplay by John Logan. Johnny Depp and Tim Burton join forces again in a big-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's award-winning musical thriller Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street…

"Depp stars in the title role as a man unjustly sent to prison who vows revenge, not only for that cruel punishment, but for the devastating consequences of what happened to his wife and daughter. When he returns to reopen his barber shop, Sweeney Todd becomes the Demon Barber of Fleet Street who 'shaved the faces of gentlemen who never thereafter were heard of again,'" state press notes. "Joining Depp is Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett, Sweeney's amorous accomplice, who creates diabolical meat pies. The cast also includes Alan Rickman, who portrays the evil Judge Turpin, who sends Sweeney to prison, Timothy Spall as the Judge's wicked associate Beadle Bamford and Sacha Baron Cohen as a rival barber, the flamboyant Signor Adolfo Pirelli."

For limited national release December 21, 2007 and wide January 11, 2008.