Hollywood, in a very real sense, is the most selfish industry on earth.  Everything that happens has an effect on projects currently in development.  Any time a birth or a death or an injury takes place, the immediate (or near-immediate) reaction is “What does this mean for (insert title of current project here)?”

But this is simply the nature of the industry.  In most industries, a person can be temporarily replaced while they go on vacation or deal with a death in the family or nurse a broken leg back to health.  But this is not the case in Hollywood, where losing an actor or an actress or a director or a writer may well change the entire face of the movie.

Thus, it’s several kinds of tragic that Sweeney Todd star Helena Bonham Carter has received indefinite leave from Terminator Salvation following the news that several family members were killed in an accident.

The actresses cousin Fiona Bonham Carter, 51, escaped with a broken shoulder. But Fiona’s son Marcus Egerton-Warburton, 14, her mother Brenda, 74, and stepfather Francis Kirkwood, 75, all died.

Fiona’s sister-in-law Kay Boardman, 54, also perished in the crash, in a remote area six hours’ drive from Johannesburg. Bonham Carter has now been granted indefinite leave from the set of Terminator Salvation in Albuquerque, New Mexico to fly back to the U.K. to comfort her distraught family.

Frankly, we’re all horrified by this–anyone who’s not has serious problems–and we all hope for a quick recovery for the injured and express fullest and sincerest condolences toward the deceased.

Which sounds trite as all hell, doesn’t it?  It really doesn’t matter how we put it, and we can MEAN it with the most sincerity and empathy possible,, but at the end of it all we’re just making noises, silently thankful that it wasn’t anyone WE knew or anyone in OUR family.  Even empathy doesn’t quite allow us to feel the pain Helena’s no doubt feeling right now over the loss of so much family.  But that’s the nature of life, now isn’t it?  It may well be enough that we genuinely feel bad for her.  We may not feel her loss as if it were our own, but that may well be beyond human capacity.  We can’t mourn fully that which we don’t know.  Oh, it’s sad, sure–we always feel bad when someone dies–but it’s not the same when we don’t know them.

So take your time, Helena…even the most diehard Terminator fans will agree that some things come first, and this is one of them.

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