DATE: Sunday, November 16, 1997             TAG: 9711140129

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E18  EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   76 lines

ACTRESS GETS ``LESS REPRESSED'' ROLE

HELENA Bonham Carter is ready to give up the corsets.

Snuffing out a cigarette, she strode into the interview looking London-hip - not Edwardian, Victorian or any of those other eras.

``Type-casting is merely a convenience, maybe for me as well as for those who make films,'' she said. ``To tell you the truth, these women I play, from other ages, are the best roles. I'd love to play a modern woman, but most of the scripts I've been offered about modern women weren't very good.''

Bonham Carter is the beauty who is known for classic and period roles, ranging from the title role in ``Lady Jane'' (at age 13), to the huge hit ``A Room With a View'' (at 18), ``Hamlet'' (opposite Mel Gibson) and ``Mary Shelley's Frankenstein'' (directed by and starring current live-in love Kenneth Branagh).

All of them were women of other ages. Now, she is playing Kate Croy in a sexy, updated movie version of Henry James' novel ``The Wings of the Dove,'' opening Friday. Kate is being pressured into making a wealthy marriage, but she is in love with a poor journalist (Linus Roache from ``The Priest''). In order to get wealth, Kate sets up her lover with a rich American girl (Alison Elliott) who is dying. It's a novel, and erotic, triangle.

``I identify with the altruism of the part. Kate is trying to make the other woman happy, too. But I don't know if I'd give my boyfriend to my best girl friend. I don't quite identify with that,'' the actress said.

``This film is less repressed than other things I've done,'' Bonham Carter said. ``Kate is a very modern woman in that she manipulates with the only weapon she has - her femininity. She reminds me a great deal of Lady Macbeth.''

Kate also had her troubles on the fashion end.

``Those hats were a hazard. You aim for the door and try to get through it. The hats, even in the updated period of 1912, were huge. And I had an ongoing argument with the costume designer about those dresses. I'm supposed to walk very graceful and all that. Actually, I'm used to wearing trousers.''

Her aristocratic bearing is, she says, ``a bit of an illusion. I'm quite a fun-loving girl. We do have a title in the family. My great-grandfather was a liberal prime minister of England. His daughter, Violet Bonham Carter, was a woman of letters. Her letters are being read on radio as a presentation in England this year. But, as a child, there were no aspirations for me - particularly none as an actress.''

``Lady Jane'' got her into movies, but she reasons that ``few people saw that.'' She feels that ``A Room With a View'' was the film that cemented her choice to become an actress. ``I wanted to go back and get my college, but my father said `Hell, no. Go out and do this. You never know how long it will last.' ''

At 18, she was a star but, as she puts it, ``I didn't really feel the Hollywood pressure. They brought me to California to present an Academy Award, but the feeling was that the only thing I could play would be English girls. That I was this historical thing. I did break out and do a `Miami Vice' show. That should have showed them.''

The press pictured her as the ``other woman'' when director Kenneth Branagh and she became an item during the filming of ``Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.'' Branagh left Oscar-winning wife Emma Thompson (his co-star in ``Henry V'' and ``Much Ado About Nothing'') and speculation has been avid ever since about the triangle. Bonham Carter refers to Kenneth often in conversation, but only in a professional capacity.

``I trust Kenneth's judgment as a director,'' she said, ``but, then, I'm surrounded by people who will tell me `the truth.' My mother, Kenneth - a lot of people. It's just that I don't always agree with them on what the truth is. I find it painful to watch myself on screen. Some people say that people get into acting to escape themselves. I've never been able to do that.''

If there were one thing Helena Bonham Carter could change it would be ``that distinctive look'' that is her beauty. ``I'd like to be able to play all different types of roles, but I'm not one who can `lose myself,' apparently, in them. I have this bold, noble face. Everyone remembers it. I'd like to have a less distinctive look.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MARK TILLIE

Helena Bonham Carter stars with Linus Roache... KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY MOVIES

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