You Will: Read These 20 Secrets About Bridget Jones's Diary
It's been 24 years since Renée Zellweger first brought Bridget Jones and all her ideal imperfections to life in Bridget Jones's Diary, in accordance with Helen Fielding's bestselling new.
Bridget Jones was factual attempting to figure it out as she went along. Who can't expose to that?
She jotted down her thoughts, she made lists, she abbreviated. Tiny did she know, she was moreover kicking birth a door wherein countless characters would follow.
And who knew they'd peaceable be filing thru in 2025 with the premiere of the fourth movie within the franchise, Bridget Jones: Angry About the Boy?!
But in 2001, when the movie adaptation of Helen Fielding's 1996 bestseller Bridget Jones's Diary made it to the substantial display, starring Renée Zellweger as the mettlesome profession lass desperately seeking esteem and the suitable weight, there wasn't precisely a surplus of cinematic heroines marching into the sector with their flaw flags flying.
“I factual laughed esteem an idiot and view, Right here is intensely mettlesome, to build this down in a book,” director Sharon Maguire said in a 2001 interview, recalling her response when she first read Fielding's new. “On narrative of it was a shrimp little bit of a taboo arena, you understand, an excessive amount of thirtysomething girls secretly afraid as to why they hadn't found the factual man, but no person mettlesome to express, 'Scrutinize, I mediate I'm a upsetting, tragic spinster, what shall I build about it?'”
Fortunately, some development has been made within the 24 years (or 29 from when the book got right here out) since striking a “Rob me as I’m!” heroine at the guts of the motion was groundbreaking.
But it didn't take twenty years to cherish that Bridget was in actual fact main a beautiful charmed life even before Put Darcy purchased his druthers about him towards the dwell of the Pride and Prejudice-inspired quandary.
She had a job that she tackled with gusto, a cute flat, a fun community of supportive chums and neatly-which design dad and mom (who had their very maintain points, but truly cherished her).
And males—along with her boss, the “build of enterprise scoundrel,” which would be frowned upon now— clearly found her reasonably charming and beautiful despite the indisputable reality that she at all times agonized over her look.
Taking a look abet, there wasn't one thing else hopelessly rotten excluding the points she had inflated in her mind (pre-Instagram but peaceable with society's relief), along with that entire single-after-30 thing, which is moreover neatly resolved at the dwell in compulsory rom-com (and Jane Austen-accredited) model.
On the least before the sequels shuffled the playing cards.
But the audacity of Bridget remains, for the explanation that time is that she was overtly focused on all the above, which is both v. v. relatable and, positive, peaceable significantly taboo.
On narrative of while tales esteem this one helped pave the manner for more female-centric motion photographs featuring adorkable gals whose imperfections are the enchantment, it has simultaneously critically change increasingly more retro to confess that you care about things esteem how your physique looks to other contributors or that, positive, you may well perhaps perhaps perhaps even have a huge profession, but um… having a S.O. would be good…
But in her quest to make the life she thinks she wants, Bridget does be taught to cherish herself a ways more, and that’s within the cessation the point.
And the success of the book—in Fielding's U.Good ample. and around the world—meant that the filmmakers have been very responsive to the expectations upon them to bring together it factual, from casting choices to the hard enterprise of translating a narrative fueled by diary entries into more cinematic motion, all while declaring the spirit of what makes Bridget somebody you care about.
In honor of the movie's Twenty fourth anniversary, listed below are 20 secrets about how they pulled it off:
Within the Working
For positive the filmmakers regarded as a slew of actresses for the position of Bridget Jones while creator Helen Fielding labored on adapting her book staunch into a feature movie with fellow writers Andrew Davies, who efficiently change into Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice into the 1995 BBC miniseries that inspired the total saga within the main build, and rom-com wizard Richard Curtis.
In December 1999, the entrance-runners have been reportedly Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, Emily Watson and Rachel Weisz. Other names that popped up as contenders included Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter and Toni Collette, who's said to have change into down the position because she was in a Broadway play at the time. (The Wild Party ran from April 13 to June 11, 2000, and filming didn't birth up till August, but presumably she view the display may well stagger a tad longer.)
But as Hugh Grant would order in almost each and every movie he made within the '90s, “Riiiiiiight…”
She Didn't Possess Them at 'Ello
There was reasonably the uproar when Renée Zellweger, magnificent lil' actress from Texas, was forged as the liked British character.
“I've by no design met Renée, but I'm told she's very funny and finding out to focus on English with an English reasonably than Texas accent,” Fielding, who it sounds as if failed to have final order, commented in Might perhaps well 2000. But as soon as the movie was made, it was obvious that the understandably preserving creator had reach around.
“Originally I was very touched by the reality that the total British nation seemed as if it would trot up in fingers esteem a headless chicken,” she recalled in a 2001 interview. “And I believed, neatly, that reveals they're very fond of Bridget, that they have been factual so mad the she wasn't being carried out by an Englishwoman. I mediate it's appropriate that it's a worldwide figure—and anyway, Scarlet O'Hara was carried out by an Englishwoman, so I mediate the Americans are getting their revenge now.”
Zellweger admitted it was “reasonably a soar of faith for each person focused on this project.”
The casting was “a straight away terror, clearly,” director Sharon Maguire said, “but I met her and cherished her, and view she had hundreds qualities that Bridget has, an outer form of vulnerability and an inside of irreverence.”
The Fully Man for the Job
Thank goodness he was on hand and enthusiastic, because both the book and the screenplay have been written with Pride and Prejudice giant name Colin Firth in mind as Put Darcy, the divorced felony first fee who makes a substandard judgment about Bridget at the birth peek but is prickly for a reason (fascinating Daniel, factual as Mr. Darcy has each and every reason to distrust Mr. Wickham in the 1810 new) and lastly realizes he was fully rotten about her—and vice-versa.
“It appealed to me, the very irony of that reality,” Firth said of what change into out to be his dual flip as Darcys from two eras, “that work I had achieved within the past was being revisited upon me in this unique build.”
The Impartial Mr. Corrupt
“I did clearly agonize that Colin would win the movie because his character wins her, but I comforted myself with the indisputable reality that I believed my character had more juicy lines. I counted them,” Hugh Grant cheekily said at the time, relating to his position as the Wickham-esque Daniel Cleaver, Bridget's lusty rogue of a boss.
“After I talked to Hugh about the character,” Maguire recalled, “he said, hilariously, 'I factual don't peek this character, who is he?' And I said, 'Oh, reach on, you understand this character.'”
Grant peaceable wasn't fully convinced, though, till he discovered that Richard Curtis, who wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, was working on the script. Correct as he suggested. “I saved announcing, 'It's not working. Correct bring together Richard Curtis to reach abet in and relief re-write it,”' he told Cinema.com in 2001. “At final they did, and as soon as Richard got right here on board, I signed on the dotted line.”
And having factual carried out a parade of candy, awkwardly charming blokes who deserved to bring together the girl, Grant enjoyed being the cad for a commerce, calling the position of Daniel “blessed relief. And a catharsis.”
“I connected to him,” he recalled on The Jess Cagle Showcase in December. “He's a disappointed man. He's in publishing and he at all times compulsory to write his maintain book and hasn't. There was all that going on.” Grant paused. “I mediate I created a fully engrossing backstory to him, none of which comes thru within the final performance.”
Working for Scale
Within the book Bridget starts off weighing 129 kilos “(but publish-Christmas)” and then chronicles 130 kilos as a “terrifying stagger into weight problems.” But alright, Zellweger needed to build weight for the position and her transformation from birdlike to nearing practical measurement was reasonably the point of curiosity.
The 5-foot-5 actress approached that aspect of her position as systematically as another, consulting an endocrinologist and a nutritionist to identify the healthiest design in an effort to add to her 110-pound frame in reasonably swift model. The routine: three meals a day, snacks, and no exercise.
“I'd have an omelet with cheese and sauce for breakfast with a fatty yogurt and then a fruit salad with a topping and juice and low and cream and a bagel with butter and a few hours later a chocolate shake with weight-build powder in it,'' Zellweger told the Contemporary York Times in 2000. ''It was esteem, build the compare, be taught your lines, eat the shake. It was all section of the job.”
Indirectly she won a reported 17 kilos, which aligns with the 136 kilos that movie-Bridget records in her diary as she vows to lose 20.
Their Impartial Girl
Lost within the figure fanfare was her accent, which she moreover painstakingly labored on, figuring out darn neatly that her casting was controversial so she'd better nail it.
So Zellweger moved to England three months before filming began to work with dialect coach Barbara Berkery each and every single day and build v. British things. She even sat in as an assistant at Picador publishing in London for two weeks, using the name Bridget Cavendish, to follow being both British and doing PR for a publishing condominium.
“It was very technical,'' she told the Contemporary York Times. ''They compulsory a extremely explicit accent from a particular social class in a particular build birth air London. We started by overenunciating and talking the Queen's English, then taking it abet a notch. It purchased to be a behavior.”
She would even talk in her British accent off-camera, “and I didn't know her as a Texan till the wrap occasion,” Grant joked, “when she change into up with this outlandish order.”
Too Valuable?
Zellweger was relationship Jim Carrey at the time, and when she'd talk over with him on the phone, she'd peaceable be using her British accent.
“I'd name my boyfriend and he couldn't take it,'' she told the Contemporary York Times. “He'd expect me to thrill talk in overall.”
But Grant and Firth “have been in actual fact model about it,” she recalled of her design ways. “They knew I wasn't some geek attempting to sound English. They knew it was section of the job.”
No longer Smokin'
Zellweger drew the line at smoking right cigarettes, as a exchange puffing on the herbal diversity as Bridget continually guarantees to attenuate down.
But the actress did work on her methodology, having most effective smoked as soon as before in her life, in college, and it made her ill.
“I had my lady friend from North Carolina who likes to have a Marlboro now and again divulge me how to retain it,” she explained to WENN. “She didn't tell me the section about how, whenever you abet it on your mouth for a while it burns your eyes, so I was doing all these gigantic scenes with Hugh and I was blinking away, attempting so laborious not to damage his factual job.”
The Jane Austen Movie Club
While Firth is within the Moist Shirt Moments in Miniseries Hall of Popularity from his flip as Nineteenth-century-generation Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice, he's not top-of-the-line Jane Austen alum in this contemporary-day retelling.
Bridget's mom, Pamela, is carried out by Gemma Jones, who was the Dashwood sisters' mum in 1995's Sense and Sensibility—which moreover stars Grant as Edward Ferrars, suitor of Elinor Dashwood, who's carried out by Emma Thompson—who later turns up as Bridget's gynecologist Dr. Rawlings in Bridget Jones's Tiny one.
There's moreover reasonably an excessive amount of Harry Potter franchise crossover, with Jones and Jim Broadbent, who plays Bridget's dad Colin, later reuniting as Madame Pomfrey and Horace Slughorn, while Thompson is in various of the motion photographs along with Professor Trelawney. And Bridget's buddy Jude, who we first explore crying about her crap boyfriend while she's within the lavatory at work is Shirley Henderson, who carried out the lavatory-haunting Moaning Myrtle.
Upright-Existence Crew
Fielding and Maguire have been dear chums in right life, and Bridget's mate Shazza, carried out by Sally Phillips, is modeled after her.
Meta Casting
Besides to having Firth and Mr. Darcy in mind when Fielding dreamed up Put Darcy, Bridget moreover will get to interview actor Colin Firth for work within the 1999 new Bridget Jones: The Edge of Purpose—an project she, as yet one other giddy fan of the BBC's Pride and Prejudice, is reasonably pondering.
But does that mean there's no Colin Firth within the Bridget Jones cinematic universe?!
Mirror Mirror
Fielding acknowledged that for trot the character of Bridget contained capabilities of the novelist herself, announcing in 2001, “I mediate the reality is, there has to be a shrimp little bit of you in a persona, a main character, for you in an effort to create her.”
Grant had identified Fielding for years, and remembered telling her a narrative that fascinating him relating to somebody as “a grimy bitch”—and then when he read Bridget Jones's Diary, there was Daniel playfully using that phrase, which moreover made it into the movie.
“And so there's even a shrimp little bit of me in that section,” he shared.
Bless This Mess
But was there a shrimp little bit of Bridget in Renée?
“Obviously I connected to the female aspect, her day-to-day routine and fight in opposition to Mom Nature,” a 31-year-venerable Zellweger told The Guardian in 2001. “On a more indispensable degree, I'm about to enter the stage of life that Bridget is experiencing and I, esteem so many contributors, understood her quest. I understood her explore self-acceptance and her day-to-day are trying to outline what will bring her happiness in life, her fight to distinguish between what it is a ways that she wants for her life and what it is a ways that society expects from her.”
Asked if she felt right-life societal expectations have been provocative, the actress replied, “It's altering, and it's in actual fact an mesmerizing time factual now. Bridget is of the final abilities that’s attempting to dawdle thru that antiquated social definition of success when it comes to ladies, in phrases of being the cornerstone of a nurturing family unit; in other phrases need to you don't bring together married and also you're not accepted in that regard by a man, then you've failed in a design.”
As for the criticism that Bridget's concerns have been more petty and venerable-fashioned than endearing and relatable, Zellweger said, “She faces those dilemmas with humor. She's unsleeping that she's self-unsleeping, which makes her not pathetic, and she's self-deprecating but in a funny design that makes her not loathsome and not superficial. It's unparalleled that Helen Fielding is so appropriate about our insecurities as human beings.”
The story isn't factual about Bridget's quest to couple up, both, she identified. Reasonably, “it's the explore who you are, attempting to outline your self and truly determine what makes you gay in life. I don't mediate she's a setback for girls. Whenever you happen to glance thru the direction of the book, and the movie as neatly, she in actual fact comes into her maintain, on her maintain. She decides to be gay now and not in some projected delusion of what the long stagger may well retain and the happiness that will perhaps also bring. She blossoms, and if that's not a truthful feminist message, I don't know what’s.”
Bum's the Be aware
Stuntwoman Dani Biernat filled within the gaps for Bridget's more harrowing moments, equivalent to her stagger down the firefighter's pole, though Zellweger amiably did the total shut-ups. Front and abet.
“That was on the tallest fireman's pole in London at a fire online page online come Borough Market,” Biernat shared with TimeOut London in 2017. “Renée did it on wires—it was her backside that got right here down—but I did the total lining up and the broad photographs with out a wire.”
The Form of All Issues
Zellweger, an everyday gymgoer with a shrimp frame, did in actual fact feel out of kinds in Bridget's physique—not that there was one thing else rotten with Bridget's physique, she insisted.
“It was so worthy fun,” she told the Contemporary York Day-to-day News about having fun with the character. “I felt new most effective in that I felt alien to myself most ceaselessly. I've by no design been that heavy.” She added, “Weight is a extremely deepest jog, it's unparalleled to each and every lady's journey and her maintain design of defining her self-image and self esteem. It's a phenomenal theme in this movie. During the errors you maintain and the ones you face and in Bridget's case, with a humorousness you’ve self-discovery and self-acceptance.”
Satirically, she's moreover been criticized (or, you understand, contributors have expressed “arena”) for being too thin on other times.
“I've been an athlete since I was very younger,” she told the paper. “So being active has at all times been section of my life. It's not been about physicality in phrases of look but about what you may well perhaps perhaps perhaps also maintain your physique build. It's been about quickening my time, not about shopping a bikini.”
Zellweger moreover told The Guardian that she didn't abet in mind Bridget to be at all “rotund.” “She has a determined physique form to me,” the actress explained, “but it for trot displays different existence that we lead, and that's what she chooses. It makes her gay to have Chardonnay and a few additional Milk Tray [chocolates], so why shouldn't she?” Nor would she name Bridget “regular,” though.
“What's regular?” she puzzled. “Kate Moss is regular—her genetic maintain-up has dictated that that is how she'll glance. For Bridget, who is voluptuous and doesn't trot to the gym on a day-to-day foundation—that's certainly regular. No longer much less beautiful, not much less modern, than somebody who weighs 20 kilos much less.”
Dialect Doubt
Count Grant amongst the skeptics when Zellweger was first forged as the v. English Bridget.
“It sounded esteem a infected belief, but it for trot change into out to be brilliantly infected,” he said in 2001.
“There was a full scandal about why isn't this a British actress?” Grant recalled within the 2020 documentary Being Bridget Jones. “I didn't know Renée Zellweger, and a Texan having fun with a British character, it did seem esteem a stretch. She was told to form of, neatly, she view she better loosen it up a shrimp bit.”
Grant later cracked, “Then she got right here in and it was Princess Margaret having had a stroke. But a week later it was a bang on.”
He was re-trotting out that Margaret reference, having told Cinema.com two decades within the past, “After Renée got right here in a foreign country, accent-shimmering she had a extremely short Princess Margaret section, which was alarming! She was soon thru that, and then there was a short section where Renée sounded very shrimp as if she…had a stroke! You realize, the whole lot was reasonably slurrrred. But then Renée knocked that on the head. And two weeks before we started taking pictures, her accent got right here perfectly into focal point. It's top-of-the-line American doing English that I've ever heard in my life.”
A Various Construct of Contention
“We have been a pair of girls on this movie,” Grant recalled in 2001 of himself and Firth. “On the total on movie sets, classically, you dwell unsleeping for the actress to reach abet out of the trailer, she's doing her makeup and wants to bring together her cloth cabinet completely ideal. But he and I developed this form of rivalry about who compulsory to be the thinnest and have the nicer dresses. So it was Renée sitting around ingesting pizza and swilling beer, ready for us to reach abet out of our trailers while we primped ourselves and achieved our salads.”
Firth said, referring complimentarily to Grant, that he felt as if he was working with a “connoisseur” of romantic comedies on this movie. (And though they wouldn't half a storyline, they'd both flex their rom-com muscles any other time within the Curtis-directed Love In actuality a pair years later.)
Combat Schlubs
Stuntmen have been venerable for when they went crashing thru the window, but in another case the climactic rumble between Put and Daniel was unchoreographed. Firth told the Los Angeles Times in 2016, “We're two very ineffectual, terrified, mad yuppies going at each and every other—pulling hair and wanting to stagger away at the identical time.”
Grant told Cinema.com, “I've been attempting to build one thing esteem that for years. You realize, when the script says 'they fight,' to ban the stunt coordinator from the region. On narrative of they at all times are trying to maintain it glance so Hollywood. You realize, we fight the manner two heart-class trained Englishmen would fight. Which I've at all times maintained would be form of girlie and cowardly, you understand? With squealing!”
But within the occasion that they’d to fight for right, “neatly clearly I'd win!” Grant promised. “You realize, I was trained to abolish! But Colin did marvelously, for somebody who's not very, neatly, sporty.”
Because it change into out, though, they have been a shatter hit and audiences demanded more.
“Hugh and I in actual fact have most effective ever labored together in stammer to fight,” Firth deadpanned in a Fandango Extras clip after he and Grant have been compelled to tussle any other time within the 2004 sequel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Purpose. “On the main movie we had shrimp or no together, except the fight. Right here we are any other time, doing completely nothing except fighting, any other time.”
So, when they reunited for the long-awaited scene, they in actual fact went for it. With the trash-talking, that’s.
“He complained bitterly, clearly,” Firth said. “I was 'hurting him,' he had bruises. I mediate potentially if we ever did build it any other time I would mumble him to bring together in a shrimp little bit of training first.”
Grant offered, “Colin now has to employ even more time within the trailer, wretched venerable boy, 'motive he's, you understand, he's losing it a shrimp. I mediate he'd be the main to tell you that. He's long gone a shrimp bit jowly and the neck's long gone a shrimp bit scrawny and all that.”
Firth countered, “I mediate he was spending a shrimp little bit of time paying attention to his physique and his fitness at the time. It's outstanding the variation three years can maintain, in actual fact, because it was completely more straightforward for me because he was worthy fleshier and his contours have been softer. It was more esteem wrestling my grandmother from that time.”
Bottoms Up
The long-awaited gargantuan kiss within the (flawed) snow between Put and a pantsless Bridget was movie-explicit, and Zellweger cherished it. Firth, meanwhile, was in dismay of how stoic his main lady was, “finding it reasonably chastening to work with a individual esteem Renée who by no design complains ever.”
“I undergo in mind that we shot it on a avenue that we have been not ready to lock down, so the red double-decker buses with contributors going by and I'm running down the bridge in my pants, my underpants,” Zellweger recalled to Leisure Weekly in 2015.
Firth said, “It’s miles a in point of fact long time within the past but what I build undergo in mind, I mediate I had chums and family reach search recommendation from that day and most ceaselessly need to you shoot a scene esteem that, the unit is liable to be little ample that folk hardly ever ever peek you're making a movie. But because it was night and because we snowed up so worthy of London for it, it seemed substantial. I'd by no design been on a movie region before which seemed so dramatic, seemed so worthy esteem a movie region. I mean from five blocks away you may well perhaps perhaps perhaps also explore the sky lit up. And the snow machines! I mediate they’d improved snow results since then but I build undergo in mind everybody sporting preserving masks excluding two actors who clearly couldn't wear a masks. And I undergo in mind contemplating that's not factual.” (Fleet-ahead to 2021…)
To which Zellweger added, “Working within the snow in my underpants was [Maguire's] name. She view it would be very, very funny and yeah, that’s why I esteem her.”
Mutual Admiration Society
When the movie had wrapped, Zellweger described Grant as “hysterical. And he's good and so incandescent, and his humor displays that.”
Grant clearly had a supreme time on region, describing his co-giant name to Elle in 2009 when requested to sum up some of his accepted main girls folk using three adjectives: “Delectable. Additionally removed from sane. Very factual kisser.”
Known as upon to overview his comments to Elle seven years later on The Graham Norton Showcase, he deemed his synopsis of Zellweger “dazzling.” She's moreover “essentially magnificent,” he added, “but her emails are forty eight pages along. Can't understand a discover of them. I'll put them on Twitter.”
And despite clearly announcing the whole lot he may well well also at any given time to build a dwell to it, Grant published in December that he and Zellweger in actual fact did be fascinating, quipping on The Jess Cagle Showcase that she was “one of the crucial few actresses I haven't fallen out with.”
“We bring together on very neatly together,” he added with a smile. “And we peaceable commerce long emails—hers, particularly. They're not not as a lot as 70 pages each and every. Involving stuff, but reasonably laborious to decipher. No, she's a neatly factual egg—and a genius. Did you explore her Judy Garland? About as factual as performing will get.”
The Academy view her Bridget was beautiful gigantic as neatly, bestowing Zellweger along with her first of four Oscar nominations. She'd win two years later, Simplest Supporting Actress for Wintry Mountain, and after a storied hiatuses from Hollywood, she won the Simplest Actress Oscar in 2020 for channeling Judy Garland in Judy.
But cheers to Bridget Jones for sweating the little stuff, writing it down and pulling off the gay ending, all while staying staunch to her perfectly rank self.
(Originally published April 13, 2021, at 9 a.m. PT)
Source credit : eonline.com
