Bridget Jones's Diary - about the film

film facts

A Working Title film, produced in cooperation with Universal Pictures, Studio Canal, Miramax and UIP. Running time: 92 minutes.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Helen Fielding

PRODUCERS: Jonathan Cavendish, Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner

DIRECTOR: Sharon Maguire [Shazzer in Helen Fielding's novel]

CINEMOGRAPHY: Stuart Dryburgh

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Gemma Jackson

COSTUME DESIGNER: Rachael Fleming

EDITOR: Martin Walsh

ART DIRECTOR: David Warren

SCREENWRITERS: Andrew Davies [Pride and Prejudice], Richard Curtis [Blackadder, Notting Hill] and Helen Fielding, based on her best selling novel "Bridget Jones's Diary", 1996. Book and script is based on Helen Fielding's weekly column, which started 1995 at the Independent newspaper and then moved to the Daily Telegraph.

Writer Andrew Davies bowed out before the end of the project after 'artistic differences' with the director. 'I was brought in, rather sweetly, to increase the Darcy quotient' says Davies. 'Not to put more sex in; it was more about the structure. 'Helen (Fielding, the book's author) had already done two quite good drafts' he says in a rather tepid tribute. 'I was delighted to get a crack at it. I had met Helen once before, so insisted - as a condition of my doing it - that I had at least one night out with her doing Bridget Jonesy things; drinking lots of chardonnary and eating lots of food.'" [the Daily Mail, Sept 2000]

CAST: Renee Zellweger (Bridget Jones), Colin Firth (Mark Darcy), Hugh Grant (Daniel Cleaver), Sally Phillips (Shazzer), Shirley Henderson (Jude), James Callis (Tom), Gemma Jones (Mum), Jim Broadbent (Dad), Celia Imrie (Una Alconbury), Honor Blackman (Penny), Crispin Bonham-Carter (Greg), Embeth Davidtz (Natasha), Neil Pearson et al. Also writers Salman Rushdie and Jeffrey Archer as themselves.

STORY LINE: Structured much like the novel [based on Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice], the movie traces a year in the life of its heroine, beginning with Bridget's ghastly Christmas-New Year celebrations with her parents and their neighbours. During the following months, she has an ill-advised fling with her flirty caddish boss (Hugh Grant); observes her parents' marital problems after her mother makes off with a sleazy presenter from a home shopping channel; makes her own foray into television when she swaps her publishing job for a gig as a news presenter; spends many a long, boozy evening with her gaggle of sweet, but hopelessly dysfunctional, female and gay friends; and gradually warms to the subtle attractions of Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), a stuffy, though ultimately charming (and extremely rich), human rights lawyer. Click here for a detailed synopsis.