BLACKPOOL, UK: The film star Helena Bonham Carter is to play Jacqui Jackson - the remarkable single British mother of seven children, four of them on the autistic spectrum - in a BBC drama called The Magnificent Seven to be screened in December.

To research the role, Bonham Carter spent time at the Jackson household in Blackpool. north-west England, but also met other women and their autistic children.

"I had never had any experience of autism before," she told the London Evening Standard newspaper. "I would come home and look at my son, Billy, who is now two, and be absolutely paranoid, particularly because he loves Thomas the Tank Engine and lots of autys love Thomas. But he is not very good at pointing, and autistic children absolutely love pointing."

Actually, many children find it very dificcult to point, and tend to pull a parent's or carer's hand towards the picture of something they want, rather than point to it themselves.

The eldest of Jacqui Jackson's children, Matthew, now 21, is in the Sea Cadets. Luke, 16, has Asperger's syndrome, has written two very entertaining books and regularly gives talks on his condition. Ben, aged eight, was never expected to walk or talk, is allergic to noise, light and clothes and spends his life in headphones, goggles and a nappy.

Bonham Carter feels her partner, the film director Tim Burton, may have autistic tendancies.

"I bet lots of animators are Asperger's," she told the Evening Standard. "Tim will kill me, but while making this drama, I realised he has a bit of Asperger's in him. You start recognising the signs. We were watching a documentary about autism and he said that was how he felt as a child.

"But that quality also makes him a fantastic father; he has an amazing sense of humour and imagination. He sees things other people don't see. Billy is enchanted by him.

"Jacqui's Luke said that, without any Asperger's, the world wouldn't go around: they have application and dedication."

(Sources: Adam Feinstein, Evening Standard, November 16, 2005)