In her new movie 'The Theory of Flight' (opening Jan. 22), Helena Bonham Carter hangs up her Merchant and Ivory corsets to tackle another project with her longtime love, actor-director Kenneth Branagh ("Celebrity"). But even if 1994's "Frankenstein" collaboration wasn't enough to scare off the actress, she admits that another factor almost made her boot her honey off the project.

"We were apprehensive at first mainly because of the press," Bonham Carter tells EW Online. (The thespian couple has been tabloid fodder since 1995, when their relationship sparked immediately after Branagh's split from wife Emma Thompson.) "We discussed whether it was a good idea because the British press are going to make a big deal of it and use this as an invitation to comment more on us as a couple than on the film. They're hideous. They have nothing good to say about us. And we wondered if this might undermine our concentration, our commitment to the roles."

While Branagh's part as the self-absorbed Richard offered the actor a chance to flex his comedic muscle, he volunteered to leave the project. "Kenneth was very good about it, saying that if this doesn't feel right for you, I'll step out," says Bonham Carter. "But everybody else was so vociferous that he was right for it, and he was." Sounds like love.