Bonham Carter predicts Oscars outfit 'catastrophe'

Quirky British actress Helena Bonham Carter predicted that her outfit for the Oscars this month "will probably be a catastrophe" - but vowed to at least wear shoes of the same color.

The actress, known for her exuberant clothes and hair - and wearing one red shoe and one green at the recent Golden Globes awards show - said her partner Tim Burton knew how difficult it is to guess what she was going to wear.

"I have no idea," she said on Monday, when asked what she would wear for the February 27 Academy Awards. "Of course I want to have fun ... It's probably going to be a catastrophe. But it's like, I'm gonna go for it.

"I'm so indecisive .. I promise I'll wear the same colored shoes," she added at a lunch for nominees vying to win an Oscar at the climax to the multi-billion dollar movie industry's annual awards season.

The 44-year-old, who was wearing a relatively restrained black dress to the Beverly Hills luncheon, said that sometimes she was straightforward in deciding what to wear, "and then suddently I go off piste."

"But we'll wait and see. And quite frankly, as my boyfriend knows, it's right up to the last minute it can go wrong at any time .. It's a mystery to me at this point," she added.

Bonham Carter is among five nominees for best supporting actress for her role as King George VI's wife - the late Queen Mother - in British historical drama "The King's Speech," which is frontrunner for a brace of Oscars.

The actress, who was accompanied by her mother to the lunch, said preparing for the role had been difficult, because she only had three weeks to research after finishing on the latest Harry Potter movie.

"As we all know, the Queen Mother lived for such a long time, so every biography is at least five inches thick," she said.

To save time she took a shortcut by talking to royal biographer Hugo Vickers, who "gave me the lowdown," she said, adding: "And I was trying to get beneath the sort of public service that we all know.

"It's difficult because I didn't think particularly, 'God, I'm a dead ringer to the Queen Mother.' I thought well I've got to catch some kind of essence, but without being a patronizing impersonation.

"So it was a fine line ... it was daunting," she said.

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