Helena Bonham Carter has spoken about the tough challenge that she and co-star Lily James faced in dealing with their humongous dresses while filming Cinderella.

The actress plays the Fairy Godmother to Lily’s Cinderella in the film and although much has been made of the size of the lead character’s blue dress, Helena pointed out that her own costume was pretty unwieldy.

She said: “We had competitions about who had the most uncomfortable dress. We were both about five foot in diameter, so we couldn’t get close to each other.

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Helena Bonham Carter as the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella (Jonathan Olley/Disney)

“Finding a place to rest was difficult because if we had half an hour break, it took an hour to get out of the dresses. So we would slump across these bean bags and groan.”

She continued of her dress: “It was an amazing construction. It had 400 LED lights inside and I had a little Belgian man who was lovely, he would disappear under my skirts and turn me on and I would light up.”

Helena added that the role had taken a lot more thought than she originally expected.

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Lily James as Cinderella (Jonathan Olley/Disney)

The actress, who previously had a relationship with director Kenneth Branagh, said: “I thought, ‘What fun – wings, wand, ex-boyfriend, good to see him again, have a bit of a chat’.

“On closer inspection, I thought I couldn’t really phone this in because it needed some kind of credibility. How do you sell the idea that a pumpkin is the ideal thing you need to create a form of transport?”

Cinderella is in cinemas now.