Helena Bonham Carter’s Dating History: All About Her Hollywood Relationships, from Kenneth Branagh to Tim Burton

Helena Bonham Carter has found “some unexpected magic” with her boyfriend Rye Dag Holmboe.

Prior to Holmboe, Carter was in long-term relationships with filmmakers Kenneth Branagh and Tim Burton. After her 1999 split with Branagh, the actress moved on with Burton two years later in 2001. The couple welcomed two children — son Billy and a daughter Nell — during their 13-year relationship. While Carter and Burton never wed, the actress referred to their split as a “very painful divorce” on the Therapy Works podcast in December 2022.

“It was a long-lasting thing,” she said. “That’s the other thing, it’s not that finite. It never ends. Even if you divorce somebody, it’s a kind of marriage if you have children with them. The relationship has to change. It’s a very complicated thing how to share the children.”

Four years after splitting from Burton, the Sweeney Todd actress met Holmboe at a 2018 wedding. Recalling their first encounter, Carter told The Guardian in October 2020 that it was “a totally random thing, which both of us nearly didn’t go to, so it was one of those moments that was so chance and ended up determining so much.”

Here’s everything to know about Helena Bonham Carter’s dating history.

Kenneth Branagh

Carter and Branagh met when they first starred together in the 1994 film Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Branagh, who was married to actress Emma Thompson at the time, started his relationship with Carter while working on the movie. Thompson and Branagh divorced in 1995 after six years of marriage.

“I was utterly, utterly blind to the fact that he had relationships with other women on set,” Thompson later told The New Yorker in November 2022. “What I learned was how easy it is to be blinded by your own desire to deceive yourself.”

However, Thompson has since forgiven Carter and Branagh. “[It] is … all blood under the bridge. You can’t hold on to anything like that,” Thompson told The Telegraph in November 2013. “She’s a wonderful woman, Helena.”

Thompson and Carter would go on to star in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II together.

Carter and Branagh would ultimately date for years. During their relationship, Branagh “avoided directing” the actress, explaining to The Guardian in October 2020 that “it can be complicated.”

Their relationship ended in 1999. Carter announced their split with a statement, which read, “I am very sad to confirm that Kenneth Branagh and I are no longer together,” per Marie Claire Australia.

Carter added, “The decision was mutual and no one else was involved. Beyond that, I have no further comment to make and I hope that the press will respect our privacy.”

Tim Burton

After her split from Branagh, Carter began a relationship with another director: Burton.

The pair met in 2000 on the set of Planet of the Apes, which Burton directed. A rep for the actress revealed to the New York Daily News in 2001 that their relationship started after filming the movie.

“She has been seeing him for the last two and a half weeks. It is a baby relationship,” the rep said in October 2001. “They’re taking baby steps. It didn’t start during Planet of the Apes.”

Following Planet of the Apes, the couple went on to work together on multiple films, including Big Fish (2003), Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007) and Alice in Wonderland (2010). However, Carter has said that she didn’t automatically get parts in his films.

“I never got a free ride with Tim because I was sleeping with him. I was always auditioning,” she told The Guardian in October 2020, joking, “And I gave him two kids and everything!”

Carter and Burton welcomed their first child, son Billy Raymond, on Oct. 4, 2003.

“On the day Billy was born, it was like walking through a mirror and everything was Technicolor,” Carter told The Guardian in 2006. “My life had been very work-orientated, and all in close-up. Once I had the family it went into sudden widescreen.”

The couple’s second child, daughter Nell, arrived on Dec. 15, 2007. She was named as an homage to “all the Helens in the family.”

“I’m totally in love. I even loved the birth. I’d do it again in a flash,” Carter told the Evening Standard in 2008.

Seven years later, the parents-of-two quietly split. A rep for the actress exclusively told PEOPLE in December 2014 that Carter and Burton had “separated amicably earlier this year and have continued to be friends and co-parent their children.”

Despite ending their relationship, Carter told Harper’s Bazaar UK in June 2016 that she and her ex “really do get on.”

“I understand him very well and he understands me,” she said. “It might be easier to work together without being together any more.”

Rye Dag Holmboe

Carter is currently in a relationship with Holmboe, whom she met at a 2018 wedding.

“I’m very happy with someone else,” she told Harper’s Bazaar UK in October 2019. “It’s been a bit of unexpected magic in my life.”

The outlet also reported at the time that she and Holmboe shared a “fur baby,” a Tibetan terrier named Pablo.

While Holmboe is over 20 years her junior, he is an “old soul in a young body,” according to the actress.

“There are people I’ve been involved with who aren’t necessarily their age, maturity wise, whereas [Holmboe] is ageless,” she told The Sunday Times in November 2022. “His eyesight is going, so we say I’m siphoning off his youth at night.”