4. Helena Bonham Carter
Carter is so often associated with wild, gothic looks, given her appearances in wild, gothic films as wild, gothic characters, and because of her marriage to the wild, gothic Tim Burton. And whilst she remains the queen of all things wild and gothic in cinema, HBC has in fact shifted acting gears on several occasions, playing a variety of complex roles including a woman with motor neurone disease in "The Theory of Flight", Charlie Bucket's mother in Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, and British Monarch Queen Elizabeth in "The King's Speech". If you didn't realise this - no biggie. She's easy to miss on first glance when she's not being wild... and gothic. HBC's reputation as twisted and deranged is in part due to the success of the Harry Potter franchise, in which she plays the cackling witch Bellatrix Lestrange. Her significant roles as Elizabeth Frankenstein, Mrs Lovett in the musical slasher "Sweeney Todd", and also as the voice of Emily the Corpse Bride in "Tim Burton's Corpse Bride" have all also contributed to association with a dark and twisted persona. Whilst Carter has admitted to child Harry Potter fans seeing her in the cold light of day and cowering behind their parents in horror, her filmography extends way past characters with scraggly hair and crazed screams. Her role as the chain-smoking Martha in "Fight Club" shows her as an emotionally unstable woman who falls for a mentally unstable man, and she even tries her hand at being a chimpanzee in 2001's "Planet of the Apes". HBC is a weird and wonderful female lead in contemporary cinema; showing off her acting prowess through more faces than you might think.