AceShowbiz - Helena Bonham Carter seeks dating advice from a handwriting expert. The "Nolly" actress - who shares children Billy, 19, and Nell, 15, with former partner Tim Burton and is in a relationship with art historian Rye Dag Holmboe - turns to a group of people she trusts to vet her potential boyfriends, including her family, the children's nanny, and a graphologist.

"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…," she said when discussing preparing to play actress Noelle Gordon in "Nolly".

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."