Helena Bonham Carter in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix © 2007 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Harry Potter characters, names and related indicia are trademarks of and © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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For British actress Helena Bonham Carter, being cast as villainous witch Bellatrix Lestrange isn't le strange at all. She's already established a predilection for unusual characters in films such as Fight Club, Big Fish, and the upcoming screen adaptation of Sweeney Todd. "Weird" isn't something that seems to bother her.

Premiere.com chatted with Bonham Carter about the latest addition to her roster of eccentric characters when we visited the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix set.

PREMIERE.COM: Tell me a little bit about Bellatrix Lestrange. Do her looks match her bizarre name?
HELENA BONHAM CARTER: The whole thing is — it's perfect for Halloween. [I'm wearing] teeth at my insistence, and I do love wearing teeth because it changes everything. And also, the ultimate is dressing up, so you might as well pile it on, that's my philosophy. I love the wig, the hair a lot. I've got a lovely ring, which [contains Bellatrix's] family crest: "Always pure." That's the Lestrange — the Black pure-blood philosophy. I've got a fantastic wand; you should see my wand. It's like no one else's. It's actually kind of warped.

There are quite a few nods in the film that relate to Nazism and Fascism. Is that in your mind when you're playing her?
Not much is in my head when I'm playing her. She's mental. I can tell you that. I was going to watch Schindler's List to get a little infusion of Nazism. And it was ironic that Ralph [Fiennes, who plays Voldemort] was this character. I didn't watch it in the end. But obviously politically it borrows a hell of a lot from Fascism, Nazism.

Well, congratulations. Because apart from Judi Dench, you were the only other British actress —
— Who hasn't gotten in. Thanks. Finally, pay me up. I do think she's a genius, J.K. [Rowling]. And I did love the first [book]. It's only through not having enough time that I didn't read two, three, four, five, six.

Yeah. There are six now.
We're on five and they're on six and then there's going to be seven. So I thought it would be fun. It's fun with the kids. And they're all very, very nice. And I like witches. I've done a lot of witches in my time actually. Tim [Burton] just said, "Of course you're going to do it even if you have no lines."

How are you playing Bellatrix?
A bit like a 4-year-old. Fits. She's got to live up to that name because she is called Lestrange. She's a loose cannon. I think the switches in mood are quite key to her. There were different elements, like she's obviously got a social personality disorder. I thought maybe she's got lots of different characters, a bit like Sybil, so she's got the 4-year-old. She's got the sadist side to her, that almost like Lord of the Flies 8-year-old boy who just loves taking pleasure from pulling wings off of a fly … There's the aristocratic [aspect], then also quite feral, too, because she has been in prison a long time. It's a bit of — Sunset Boulevard came to me. There's a part of her that she was fantastically beautiful once, and she's somewhat damaged now, but she carries herself as if she was her own movie star. Or that she carries herself as if she is still all together when she isn't quite. I hope there'll be a bit of fragility to her, because I don't believe in absolute evil.

- Reporting by Mark Salisbury and edited by Stephen Saito

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