Helena Bonham Carter sends dates' handwriting off for analysis

Helena Bonham Carter takes dating advice from a handwriting expert.

The 'Nolly' actress - who has children Billy, 19, and Nell, 15, with former partner Tim Burton and is in a relationship with art historian Rye Dag Holmboe - gets a group of people she trusts to vet her potential boyfriends, including her family, the children's nanny, and a graphologist.

Discussing preparing to play actress Noelle Gordon in 'Nolly', she said: "I got my graphologist to look at her handwriting – it looks almost backward. It’s absolutely so uptight and controlled, but with a big flourish. She was so presented as a public figure – the rigid posture, the red hair – which was fake…”

Asked if she asks a graphologist to "analyse the relevant handwriting" that comes her way, including the people she dates, Helena replied: “Oh yes, I have – with all of them.”

Then pressed on if the handwriting expert had "warned [her] off" anyone, she added in an interview with The Times magazine: “Yes, but too late! The writing was literally on the wall for one of them!

"I always check [potential partners] with my graphologist, my aunt and the nannies. Very useful. People who are in your home. They know.”

Meanwhile, the 56-year-old actress explained she "dressed Victorian" as a teenager in a bid to avoid becoming sexualised and to disguise the parts of her body she disliked.

She said: “I dressed Victorian. I wasn’t mad on my thighs and my lower half. My brother’s nickname for me was PB – ‘prominent bum’. Long skirts cover it all. It’s a bit like Frida Kahlo – you end up inventing your armour because you’re hiding something, which in fact then becomes your virtue. That’s why Lulu Guinness was a role model for me – she never did jeans, because she didn’t like her lower half, and invented this… fabulousness instead.”