How ‘Fight Club’ stopped Helena Bonham Carter getting “very angry” with her career
Helena Bonham Carter has never been one to stick to conventional Hollywood norms, with an eclectic career that has seen her in period dramas, fantasies and animations, bringing her famous quirkiness to each character. The actor brings a level of grit and mystery to her performances, never predictable in her choices and often fleshing out the most eccentric and unlikeable of characters, making them distinctly her own. One role that encapsulates this ability of hers is that of Marla Singer in David Fincher’s Fight Club.
Fight Club is about as grungy as you can get; a living testament to the grit and lasting power of the independent filmmaking scene during the 1990s. Many would argue that it is Fincher at his best, with a dark and calculated color palette and precise attention to detail that elevates the world building in each of his projects, aptly used in this one to capture a dystopian consumerist world that has become jaded by materialism and our lack of connection.
Bonham Carter is nothing short of perfect in this world, a brilliantly disturbed women who attends the same support groups as Tyler, with both of them becoming somewhat addicted to the sympathy and temporary endorphin’s they receive from the group as they share their fake diseases. Bonham Carter is a natural character within this strange setting, a vague love intertest that is mostly a reminder to Tyler of his own inner demons and lack of mental stability, someone he sees as being far more unhinged than he is but slowly realizes she is more sane.
When asked about the challenge of adapting to this role, Bonham Carter revealed how she initially felt bogged down by the less-upbeat work she was doing, saying “Yes, and you become very angry and depressed that you keep getting offered only these exceedingly demure and repressed roles. They’re so not me. That’s why films like Fight Club (1999) were so important to me because I think I confounded certain stereotypes and limited perceptions of what I could do as an actress. I also get fed up with the fact that casting agents and directors have this impression of me as being frail and petite. I find it very patronising. I’m quite beefy and strong. I was a gymnast in school and I have lots of muscles”.
After playing many depressed and downtrodden women, it’s understandable why the role of Maria was welcomed by Bonham Carter; a character that initially comes across as being somewhat fragile and temperamental, but we then realize that she is this very hardened and weathered person that seeks comfort in disturbing ways. In many ways, this role was the antidote to the pigeon-hole that Bonham Carter describes, a tonal opposite to the prim and proper lady she plays in A Room with a View and the period work she built her career on.
Bonham Carter is constantly reinventing herself, demanding every ounce of your attention as she shifts before your very eyes, a disarming game of cat and mouse with the audience that is nothing short of thrilling.
