Watch Your Wallet! Helena Bonham Carter Learned How to Pickpocket for Les Miserables Movie

Talk about method acting! To prepare for playing the despicable Madame Thenardier in the upcoming Les Miserables movie, Helena Bonham Carter had to learn the ways of the wicked inn-keeper, which included learning to master the art of petty theft.

“I’m playing Madame Thenardier. She’s a bad sort and I learned how to pickpocket,” Bonham Carter told British newspaper The Daily Mail. According to the report, Bonham Carter demonstrated her hidden talent (“Not quite a talent, maybe a sideline,” she warned) at the BFI London Film Festival Awards, where she was honored with a BFI Fellowship. The actress was able to correctly identify the exact location of a British reporter's wallet and phone, as well as the latter's make. "I'm pretty good at it," she added.

In the highly-anticipated Les Miz movie musical, which hits theaters on Christmas Day, Bonham Carter plays the devious wife of an equally crude inn-keeper (played by Sacha Baron Cohen). Between these two always surprising actors, pickpocketing almost certainly won’t be the only trick the big-screen Thenardiers have up their sleeve.