Helena Bonham Carter benefits from parenting classes

Helena Bonham Carter has found parenting classes "useful".

The 'King's Speech' actress - who has two children, Billy, seven, and three-year-old Nell, with her long-term partner Tim Burton - has come to view the guidance sessions as a useful support group for mothers and fathers and has found them to be extremely beneficial.

She said: "Parenting is much harder than acting and you just never know what to do, so Tim and I are taking classes together and they're really useful. I'm learning lots.

"It's a bit like Parenting Anonymous with a group of parents spewing out their latest trauma of the week."

Helena, 44, famously lives in the house next door to 52-year-old filmmaker Tim in London but she says they have now taken measures to further connect the two properties.

She explained in an interview with the Daily Mirror newspaper: "We couldn't keep going in and out of each other's houses so now it's just one house which is divided down the middle.

"We're lucky enough to have our own separate spaces, but they're connected and it's really not that strange.

"Some people seem to think we have a subterranean tunnel that connects the two houses and they're heavily disappointed when they see it's just two houses squished together."