Mrs. Lovett

"That's all very well but what about him?"

- Mrs Lovett about the corpse of Adolfo Pirelli

Nellie Lovett is a supporting protagonist of the 1979 musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and the 2007 live-action film of the same name. She is a owner of a bake shop who was in league with Sweeney Todd until the end.

In the film, she was portrayed by Helena Bonham Carter, who also portrayed Bellatrix Lestrange, Madame Thenardier, and Red Queen.

History
Mrs. Lovett first appeared when Todd returned to London, where she explained to him how his wife Lucy poisoned herself after being raped by Judge Turpin, who has taken in Todd's daughter Johanna as his ward since he planned to marry her for himself. This drives an angry Todd to form a plot to kill Turpin in revenge for this.

When Adolfo Pirelli was killed by Sweeney in a failed attempt to blackmail him, Mrs. Lovett offers the idea to bring business up by cutting the bodies up and bake them into her meat pies; even taking Pirelli's assistant boy Tobias Ragg as her own. Todd eventually tags along with this after his failed attempt to kill Turpin, murdering several customers and allowing Lovett to use the bodies to cook up her pies for profit.

When business was up, she told Sweeney that she would like to marry him and retire. Then in a series of events, Mrs. Lovett locked up Toby in the basement where she cooks the bodies and he escaped through the sewers. When Todd finally killed Turpin, along with Beadle Bamford and a beggar woman, Turpin was alive for a few seconds and grabbed Lovett's dress, causing her to scream just as Turpin bleeds to death. Todd rushed to see what was going on. He then tells her to start the oven and looks over the beggar woman and discovered it was Lucy. Lovett then confesses that the poison made Lucy slightly crazy and that she lied to Todd only because she loved Todd. At first, Todd pretends to forgive her and then waltz her towards the oven, but kills her by tossing her into the fiery oven.

Mrs. Lovett's death proved to Todd's downfall, as the entire scene was witnessed by Tobias, who angrily slits Todd's throat in revenge for Lovett's death.

Trivia

 * In the Broadway version, she was portrayed by Angela Lansbury.