Helena Bonham Carter has revealed she had to take her work home with her while filming a new drama about Liz Taylor as her movie director partner would continually imitate her screen husband Richard Burton.

The actress said her real-life man Tim Burton adopted the voice of his Welsh namesake as "revenge" for her staying in character.

Bonham Carter stars opposite Dominic West in the 90-minute BBC4 drama Burton And Taylor, to be screened on Monday.

She said she found it hard to leave the character of Taylor when she finished filming each day: "She stuck, she's very contagious, she's like a disease."

And Bonham Carter added that it must have been "very irritating" for those around her, having to hear the voice she adopted for the role.

"I'd be sounding like this drawl all the time and squeaky. But then Tim Burton, the other Burton that I live with, he worked out his revenge was to become Richard Burton himself.

"So there were two Richard Burtons, it was very confusing. And then I'd get this strange Richard Burton at home, who didn't say very much. He'd say a word every minute - it was very funny."

The BBC film is set in the early 1980s when Burton and Taylor - who were married to each other twice - appeared together in the stage production Private Lives.

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