Helena Bonham Carter reveals how copying her classmate’s work led to the start of her career 

Helena Bonham Carter has revealed the start of her career was due to ‘a blag’ – after she copied a classmate’s literary work.

The Harry Potter and Sweeney Todd star said a poem she wrote aged 13 that won a WH Smith writing competition was based on a sketch by a fellow pupil. 

She used the £25 winnings to get a photographer to take her picture, which she put in actors’ directory Spotlight.

It led to her big break as Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with A View in 1985. 

Helena Bonham Carter has revealed the start of her career was due to ‘a blag’ – after she copied a classmate’s literary work

The Harry Potter and Sweeney Todd star said a poem she wrote aged 13 that won a WH Smith writing competition was based on a sketch by a fellow pupil. She used the £25 winnings to get a photographer to take her picture, which she put in actors’ directory Spotlight

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Ms Bonham Carter, whose father had a stroke at the time of the contest, told The Times: ‘I won. But I cribbed. 

‘Harriet Hill had done a really clever sketch about how rumours got out of hand – it was about gossip – and so I just kind of stole it and put it in a poem instead. Harriet didn’t like it.

‘I should have been honest. Look, we all steal. I just changed the medium. It was legit. But I was a child. And dad was ill, and I just had this moment of realising,

 ‘OK, a terrible thing has happened. I’m mistress of my own destiny now’.’

Ms Bonham Carter stars as Crossroads actress Noele Gordon in ITV’s Nolly, airing next month.