When you emerge blinking and dewy-eyed from the film of Bridget Jones's Diary, there will be one question on your lips and one question only. No, it will not be: "How many omelettes did Renée Zellweger have to eat again, before her face got so fat that her features look as if they're burrowing into her face like baby moles?" (that was unsisterly, but honestly, no Bridget Jones aficionado expected her to be tubby). 

And no, it will not be: "Why are they all so posh, all of a sudden?" nor "What's happened to the timeshare intrigue at the end, which I never fully understood in the first place?". 

It will be "Hugh or Colin? Hmmm, Colin or Hugh? Well, Colin's so tasty. But Hugh in those glasses, oh God! But then, Colin at the end, oh, oh, oh ..." and so on, ad nauseam. It is an almost impossible quandary. Hugh Grant, as a cad and a bounder, achieves a level of devilish appeal, irresistible anyway, but all the more so for being shockingly unexpected. 

But then Colin Firth, as the brooding good guy, seems to epitomize heroism and, shucks, all that is eternally good about humanity in a way that he hasn't since ... well, the last time he played the brooding good guy.

Under normal circumstances, the choice would be simple, since the good guy is always the humourless one with the small todger, and the bad guy is the one who does jokes and sex.  Thus, you choose the bad one till the time comes when you need a staying-put one, and then you choose the good one and watch more telly. This being a female fantasy, however, the good guy has a sense of humour, thus muddying the waters, and neither the bad guy nor the good show their todgers at all. 

You just have to take as read that they're both hung like donkeys, on the basis that otherwise the dilemma would never have occurred, it would have been all eenie-meenie-minee-good-grief! -where-have-you-been-hiding-that? 

How to decide, then? First, the glory of their physiques. They both look towering and manly all the way through, which I believe has more to do with Zellweger being five foot two than it has to do with new developments in growth hormones for English actors. 

Hugh steals the march with his utterly hairless yet unendingly masculine upper arms, which you get to look at for - no, not 12 seconds, people, not 22 seconds ... 32 seconds! - while he falls into a pond and gets back out again. This scene also presents the opportunity to look at a) his torso in wet shirt b) all other aspects of his upper body not covered by the word "torso" and c) his lovely, besunglassed face. I cannot stress strongly enough just what an opportunity this is. 

Colin, on the other hand, does not fall into a lake at any point, in stark contrast to his performance in Pride and Prejudice, whereby he landed this role in the first place (in a cunning, meta, art 'n' life style that hurts my head when I try to explain it). 

He is very understated, sartorially speaking, apart from the time when he wears the Rudolph Christmas jumper (readers will understand) and, frankly, fouls up the entire opening sequence (the whole point, il direttore, is that in the Christmas pullover he's meant to be unattractive, thus adding to Bridget's amazement when she falls for him. In this film, I must point out, he is attractive at all times. Even in the jumper, he is raw sex in a jumper). 

You've probably guessed the conclusion to all this. That's right, they are both peerlessly beautiful. They are created of every creatures' best, they simply cannot be bettered. Until, that is, the other arrives on the screen, and tips the balance wholly the other way. Luckily, they only occupy the same scene once or twice, for you can imagine what confusion it causes
amid the audience. 

Total aesthetic parity being the case, this particular match needs a personality-based decider. Hugh Grant, without the sweetness, loses the floppiness which for so long has misled so many of us into calling him a "floppy arse". His flinty streak, the lascivious self-interest of his action, functions as a perfect counterpoint to the anodyne, public-school pleasantness of his demeanour. 

Colin Firth, on the other hand, couldn't be horrid, since he already has what I like to know as a "cold chin". That's a chin which juts, in an intolerant and cold fashion. His aching, almost painful charm comes from the juxtaposition of the chin and the passionate kindness lurking beneath (well, lurking beneath some part of his exterior, anyway - I'm not sure that it actually resides in his jaw). 

Let us not forget, furthermore, that the naughty Hugh changes his spots, or at least some of them. Sparing not a thought for those of you who don't know what happens in the end (Why don't you? Where have you been? In a box?) he comes good. Not good enough for Bridge, but good enough for any viewer who was just about to fall for Colin but might yet change
her mind. 

And so, having examined the pair from every conceivable angle, the quandary remains. Hugh's cheek (literal and metaphorical) versus Colin's fathomless eyes? Colin's moral rectitude versus Hugh's voracious-sex face? Colin's pinstripe chic versus Hugh, oh Hugh, in a sky-blue shirt. That's wet. 

He falls in the river, you know. All reasonable girls will plump for Colin, what with his beauty and upstandingness. All wilful girls will fall for Hugh, on the unarguable basis that they ought rightly to be falling for Colin. The vast bulk of us, though, will fall for them both. We will never, ever be able to decide. This is, to say the very least, most unsettling. [From the Evening Standard, 26 March 2001, by Zoe Williams]

When it was announced that they were making a movie of Helen Fielding's snazzy, flighty retelling of 'Pride and Prejudice', 'Bridget Jones's Diary', no one was surprised. Predictable yelps of outrage went up, however (particularly from the Little Englanders of the mid market tabloids), when it was announced that American Renée Zellweger - not Kate Winslet, not Helena Bonham Carter and not (thank God) Liz Hurley - had won the lead role. Meanwhile, cynics prepared themselves for another mediocre British romantic comedy compromised by Hollywood investment. But if you keep an open mind and go see it, you'll be in for a pleasant surprise - from Zellweger, who's terrific, and from the film itself, which is really rather good. 

Largely faithful to the book (if that's important to you), 'Bridget Jones's Diary' manages to be mainstream yet reasonably inventive, cute yet not cloying, and even oddly touching in places. There is a darkening sense of misery in the scenes where Bridget drowns her sorrows alone, washed up on the couch like Tom Hanks in 'Cast Away', though fortuitously equipped with vodka and a stereo. Like 'Notting Hill', another Working Title production, the film counterpoints British insecurity with Yankee slickness, but it doesn't feel the need to flatter the American audience. In fact, the film is so English in its mindset in some ways (just by having a heroine who smokes and swears, for example) one wonders if the US audience will take to it at all. Presumably that's where Zellweger comes in. /.../

According to producer Jonathan Cavendish, 'We all had a clear idea of what we were looking for - director Sharon Maguire and l even had a word for it: "Bridgetness". When Renée walked through the door, we were half thrilled and half appalled; we'd found Bridget, but she was a Texan!' Cavendish says the integral elements of 'Bridgetness' comprise 'enthusiasm and vulnerability, intelligence mixed with lack of confidence, a sympathetic, good-natured quality - and wildness'. To which he adds the rider, 'and of course Bridget fans know she is not perfectly slim - and here was this perfectly slim actress standing in front of us'.

Actresses can't win: they're ridiculed if they're too fat and berated as bad role models if they're too thin. But fat isn't a feminist issue for Zellweger, who won't be lured into denouncing the sizeist nature of the industry. Putting on weight was no more of a problem than 'training for the dialogue, or living here in England so that I'd know what Harvey Nicks was or who some of the television personalities are that Bridget refers to. It was just another part of the job.

Some people might mutter that having Colin Firth and Hugh Grant fight over this apparently normal woman could only ever happen in the movies, but at least letting the average sized girl win goes a little way towards allaying female criticisms that decry the regressive obsession with relationships, self-image & landing a man that are so fundamental to 'Ally McBeal', 'Sex in the City' and all the shows and books in the increasingly popular Cosmopolitan Chick Flick & Lit sub genres.

I mention that one (male) critic thought it was incredibly 'brave' to go on screen weighing that much! (In fact she's only about nine stone in the film). Did she think she was brave? 'What was brave was the first day shooting on a set full of real people when your ass is essentially landing on the camera operator's face 20 times' This is in reference to a scene where Bridget, having just got a job as a TV reporter must slide down a foreman's pole in a mini-skirt straight onto the camera. No stunt bum was used. 'Yes, I'm ashamed to say the Brazilian-sized bum was mine; and I don't mean Brazilian in reference to the people, I mean in reference to the country. That was scary for me because I'm a fairly modest person. Not any more, now, before, with other shoots I'd be covering myself & going, 'Boys out'' and now I'm like 'Whatever.' I didn't feel familiar or recognize my own body. It was strange to feel so uncomfortable and to be running around half naked with the crew full of men. That was a real challenge for me but it became fun.

For Zellweger, the bigger challenge was getting the accent right. Talking to me she sounds as American as a square dance, her own breathy, slightly Texan twang just audible but not too pronounced ( her mother is Norwegian and her father is Swiss, so she says she never sounded entirely Texan). In the film, although she's slightly posher than you'd expect from the Sloane-baiting character in the book, to my ears it sounds like a perfectly convincing impersonation of the upper middle class Home Counties 'gels' you see clogging up the bars of Notting Hill. She trained with dialect coach Barbara Berkely even before she met the producers. 'I didn't want to be a part of it if I didn't think I had a chance to nail it & do the accent properly. Because it's an important book to a lot of people, and I didn't want to come in there & do a half-ass-rendition'

Once the film was green lit with Zellweger in the role her preparations involved spending 14 weeks working incognito at Picador, publisher of the novel - which was director Sharon Maguire's idea. There she spoke every minute with an English accent to polish it further and get a feel for Bridget's world. Did the experience provide a chance to disappear into the role, and perhaps from her own fame? 'I've never been so aware of my own skin. Ever. Of my mouth, the way it worked and what was coming out of it. I was second guessing everything I said. And that was the point - to have all that self-consciousness dissipate. 

At one point one of the girls in the office came up to her and told her how much she looked like 'that woman in Jerry Maguire' to which Zellweger feigned surprise. She was obviously convincing as a publicity assistant. 'At the end of my stay there, a woman came over from a different department and said 'I hear you're leaving and I'm asking around to see if you can fill a post here'. It was the nicest, nicest thing. When my friend Tim gave his desk up for the me to go over to the other side of the partition, it was like 'Goodbye! We're going to miss you!' when he was only on the other side of the bookshelf. It was a good excuse to have a cake. There was a lot of that. Camilla, who runs the publicity department there was my boss and she was wonderful

It was reported that one of her jobs was to cut out all the press clippings that referred to the film, including ones that denounced her casting as Bridget. Luckily, because she was the 'new girl', no one ever quizzed her about the television personalities she was boning up on. The experience helped because she 'knew what to do when there was admin-ing or just sifting at the desk to be done. There are quite a few scenes we shot at the desk that aren't in the film which for obvious reasons we didn't include,  because you can't keep people in a theatre for a week-and-a-half. So I knew what to do, I knew where to sit, and I knew what her routine was about. And that was invaluable. More than anything it was about feeling comfortable in that situation, including the accent, including the day-to-day regimen of the thing.'

Meanwhile, Berkeley's insistence that she keep up the accent offset had other perks. 'It was a great way to get straight to where you were going in a cab, and not go by Harrods four times. At first, I was like; "So are there three Harrods in London?"

I'm relieved to hear it wasn't just Method acting silliness. Indeed, Zellweger is blessedly down-to-earth - she turns up for the photo-shoot refreshingly unfettered by any kind of PR entourage (unless you count the dog) and is happy to be photographed in her own clothes, sans make-up. She is also fairly free of the usual pretentious thespian guff. What she likes about acting is 'the day; I like what the day's about', by which she seems to mean the variety, the immediate pleasures of it. What attracted her to the role was Bridget's 'relatable', universal qualities ('The book is hysterical and it's hysterical because cellulite doesn't have cultural boundaries'), although she felt responsible not to 'blaspheme' by ignoring its specificity.

In fact, it almost works to the film's advantage that Zellweger is American, partly because she brings a certain gawky outsider quality to the role, and partly because she doesn't come trailing too much baggage for the audience. As Bridget, Zellweger projects an air of giggly mischief, like a teenager pretending to be older than she is as she bluffs her way ineptly from being a publicist for a publishing company to being a television reporter.

She does the winsome stuff well, but also the prat-falls, and shows a particular aptitude for projecting embarrassed gameness, a very English trait seen in Bridget's irresistibly awful public speaking assignments, for example. 'We were just finishing the sound edit yesterday,' Cavendish says, 'and I was watching Renée's speech at the literary party for the 47,000th time - and I still laughed! The way she pulls herself up halfway through this disaster just makes me howl!'

You can well believe the stories that everyone liked her on set, especially when she paid for pizza for the whole crew one night . Here she is, just another slightly jet-lagged (or hung over?) girl who distractedly picks at her nail polish and wears a jumper that's starting to bobble. She gets a little defensive when I ask her about how she connected to Bridget's loneliness, perhaps wary that it's leading to a question about her recent bust-up with Carrey. Minutes later, she's starting to warm up again, asking me questions, telling rambling off-the-record anecdotes (but don't worry - you're not missing anything). By the end of the interview, I ask if it was any different working with a female director for the first time. She says, with an impish frankness, that the only advantage was: 'I could borrow tampons if I needed one." Just the sort of thing Bridget Jones would say.