“I felt really mortified”: Helena Bonham Carter’s 1 Improvised Scene Accidentally Made Harry Potter Star Bleed
Besides being one of the most popular English actresses in Hollywood, Helena Bonham Carter was also one of the most hated actors in the Harry Potter film series. Although the film series came to an end quite some time ago, her portrayal of Bellatrix Lestrange is still capable of bringing a shudder to fans.
It is quite unfortunate that accidents are not uncommon on sets, no matter how efficiently they are built, or how careful actors remain. The Harry Potter set was no exception as Helena Bonham Carter accidentally hurt Matthew Lewis during the filming of the fifth movie.
Helena Bonham Carter Hurt Matthew Lewis’ Ear
Helena Bonham Carter has worked in some of the best movies to date. She is most known for her roles in period dramas that have been blockbusters, so much so that she was typecast as the ‘English rose’. She has not only won some of the most prestigious awards but has also been nominated for the Academy Award twice.
Accidents happen every now and then on sets, and one happened with Helena Bonham Carter too. In an interview (via GSA), she admitted to having accidentally hurt Matthew Lewis on the set of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. She said:
“That was bad. I was mortified, actually, with Neville Longbottom. I think I had to do sort of like I was just torturing him and I thought it’d be a fun idea to use my wand as a Q-tip, and you know, and just give his ear a clean. But then it went too far in, as I put it in, he went that way. And I think, I actually did draw blood inside his ear. That was terrible. I felt really mortified.”
The scene during which the accident happened was the one in which Harry Potter and his friends including Neville Longbottom were fighting the Death Eaters (followers of Voldemort) at the Ministry of Magic. Bellatrix was using Neville to blackmail Harry and decided to do something new which ended up in this awful incident.
Matthew Lewis Confirmed Helena Bonham Carter Hurt Him
Hurting Matthew Lewis was never the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory actress’ motive. In fact, she profusely apologized to Lewis after she found out that she had hurt him. The Me Before You actor was smart even as a young actor and behaved quite maturely.
In an interview with Parade, he jokingly said he forgave Carter because she introduced him to her then-partner Tim Burton. He told the outlet:
“We finished the scene and then I went to one of the stuntmen and told him what happened and we got a doctor and he said it was going to be okay, but that it was going to hurt for a few days. He gave me some painkillers and I just went home. I can hear absolutely fine now, and Helena was very, very apologetic. She introduced me to her husband Tim [Burton] at the premiere, so I let her off!”
This was not the first accident on the sets of Harry Potter. Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double David Holmes was paralyzed from the chest down after getting into an unfortunate accident during the filming of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1.
