Despite the fact that asking for a warm pig belly for my aching feet has kind of become my new — albeit slightly-bordering-on-obnoxious — thing, I still haven’t seen Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. I don’t know why. I want to, but being fairly lazy when it comes to actually going to the theater is also kind of my thing. It’s not that I don’t like to go — I do. I’m just … well, lazy about it.

Fortunately, being lazy about going to the movies doesn’t mean being lazy about keeping up with one of my favorite actresses, Helena Bonham Carter — the very one who delivered my favorite quote from the movie I’ve never seen.

Helena’s candidness about her family’s history with mental illness has earned her a lot of press lately; mostly it’s been blogs and other online media sources that’ve quoted the original March 5 Times Online article, Helena Bonham Carter on bullies, Tim Burton and Alice In Wonderland, during which the actress discusses her mother’s breakdown, her own depression and therapy, and what she dubs “healthy insanity.”

It was an interesting article, no doubt, but also interesting is the slightly older Guardian article, Helena Bonham Carter: ‘We’re the bonkers couple’, during which Helena touches on her mother’s breakdown but dives deeper into how it — and her father’s stroke when she was 13 — affected her childhood and, eventually, her future.

I just went and got an agent ­because I thought I can create my own world — you can’t right your own life, but you can escape to a world where you can have control.

In ways, you can right your own life. For example, if you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing — whether it’s working a job that makes you miserable, staying in an unhealthy relationship, or abusing drugs — you can stop. You can find a new job, or end the relationship, or seek treatment for addiction.

But rather than things you can control, I think Helena was referring to things you can’t control. She couldn’t control her parents’ health, nor could she make it better, so she created another, new world for herself. One where she could be in control (as much as a beginning actress can be, that is) and one she enjoyed and in which she felt productive.

What are some steps you’ve taken to “right” your own world? Or, if you couldn’t “right” those elements, have you taken steps to create another one?

Were you successful?

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Dr Antoine Spiteri (March 19, 2010)

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    Last reviewed: 19 Mar 2010