Bonham Carter once said she received some acting advice from an unusual source while she was preparing to play Princess Margaret in "The Crown."
"My main thing, when you play someone who is real, you kind of want their blessing because you have a responsibility," she said at the 2019 Cheltenham Literature Festival, per The Guardian. This led her to contact the ghost of her character via a psychic medium.
"She said, apparently, she was glad it was me," Bonham Carter said. Apparently, the ghost of Princess Margaret told her that "'You're better than the other actress'. . .that they were thinking of. They will not admit who it was. It was me and somebody else," Bonham Carter said. "That made me think maybe she is here, because that is a classic Margaret thing to say. She was really good at complimenting you and putting you down at the same time."
Bonham Carter also said that the late princess had some specific character advice: "'Get the smoking right. I smoked in a very particular way,'" the ghost purportedly told her. "'The cigarette holder was as much a weapon for expression as it was for smoking.'"