Who’s that lady? For her upcoming role as the late Elizabeth Taylor in BBC America’s Burton And Taylor, Helena Bonham Carter undergoes a major makeover in order to transform into the glam pop-culture icon.
In recently released images from the film’s production, the 47-year-old actress looks virtually unrecognizable with perfectly coiffed hair, showy diamond earrings and Taylor’s signature pink pout.
Standing beside her in the image is The Wire‘s Dominic West, 43, who will star opposite Carter as Taylor’s fifth and sixth husband Richard Burton. The turbulent real-life couple initially met on the set of Cleopatra in 1963 and married one year later. Their 12-year marriage was punctuated with a brief divorce in 1974.
The film is set in 1983 and focuses on the volatile couple’s revival of Noel Coward’s Private Lives. Carter has been candid about her flippant attitude toward Hollywood glamour in the past, a departure from Taylor’s own love of the limelight.
“Quite frankly, as my boyfriend [longtime love Tim Burton] knows, right up to the last minute, it can go wrong at any time,” she told Us Weekly of finding the perfect red carpet dress. “I can be all right, then suddenly I go off piste. We’ll see. It’s a mystery to me, actually.”
Late last year, troubled starlet Lindsay Lohan generated plenty of negative buzz in the role of Taylor for Lifetime original movie Liz & Dick opposite Grant Bowler as Burton.
“Everything I’ve gone through made me ready to play Liz,” the 26-year-old actress told Us Weekly last fall, adding that the two actresses were very different in one respect. “Elizabeth was drunk on sets. I’ve never been drunk on set, ever. I did my time and I respect the law.”