The Body Shop
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 16, 2001 9:00 p.m.
 Photos from Miramax Films Renée
Zellweger stars in Sharon Maguire’s new film "Bridget
Jones’s Diary."
By Emilia Hwang
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
After a few glasses of Chardonnay and a dozen cigarettes,
Bridget Jones is finally ready to face her job in the fast-paced
world of publishing, while balancing a rigorous routine of counting
calories and trying to snare a decent boyfriend.
Helen Fielding’s candid chronicle of a young Brit
struggling to survive single life in London has grabbed the
attention of readers across the world.
“Bridget Jones’s Diary,” based on
Fielding’s international best-selling book, ventures to bring
the title character’s painfully hilarious and absurdly
neurotic adventures to movie audiences.
“It’s great that they’ve enjoyed the
book,” Fielding said at a Los Angeles press junket. “I
think they’re going to enjoy this film. Like me, they know
that the film is another creative incarnation of the
book.”
The movie is directed by Sharon Maguire, Fielding’s friend
and inspiration for the feminist character Shazza (Sally
Phillips).
Despite all the chatter surrounding the casting of an American
as the beloved British heroine, actor Renée Zellweger embraced
the challenge of bringing Bridget Jones to life. In addition to
trading in her Texan accent for a variant of the Queen’s
proper English, the usually health-conscious actor put on an extra
20 pounds to play the role.
“I wanted for her to physically reflect the lifestyle that
she leads, so it was more about a lifestyle change than
anything,” Zellweger said. “I wanted her to look like
what she looked like in my head after I read (the book).”
 Director Sharon Maguire talks with
Hugh Grant and Renée
Zellweger (right) on the set of “Bridget
Jones’s Diary.” The adaptation of a best-selling novel
is now open nationwide. Aside from having a restless charm and a
good-natured spirit, Jones is a disaster in the kitchen and a
catastrophe when it comes to men. Though often awkward and
irrational, the thirty-something singleton is also an independent
working woman, a loving daughter and a caring friend.
“We need to see more human qualities celebrated in the
media,” Fielding said. “She’s not perfect. She
doesn’t always look fabulous. She doesn’t do everything
right. She’s just in an ordinary job, struggling along, but
you like her because she’s a human being. She just wants what
everyone else wants.”
Fielding also said that audiences will appreciate a contemporary
heroine that’s not stick thin, a refreshing change from media
images of female perfection.
“You see an anorexic model on the television who appears
to go from the gym to running a major company to home to a perfect
husband and children, and cooking dinner for 12 people
effortlessly,” Fielding said. “It’s just a
figment of some advertisers imagination, but we all think
we’re supposed to be that. I think it’s sad.”
Before the movie, and even before the book, “Bridget
Jones’s Diary” began as a column by Fielding in
London’s Independent newspaper. Since it was too exposing and
embarrassing to write about herself, the journalist created a
comically exaggerated figure.
“I was looking through my old university diaries and I
found that there was a tragic lack of social engagements, but a lot
of lists of food and calories ““ so it would be carrot: 15
calories, yogurt: 150 calories, box of Milk Tray chocolates: 4782
calories,” Fielding said. “I was 18, I was really thin,
but I was dieting like mad, and there’s something about women
always trying to alter themselves, never good enough as they
are.”
Fielding thinks that women will identify with Bridget’s
struggles as she grapples between how she thinks she’s
expected to be and how she is. In addition to her obsessive
dieting, Bridget desperately attempts to avoid spinsterhood. She
bounces between a love-hate relationship with the rich and
intellectual attorney Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) and a passionate one
with her arrogant and brash boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant).
After an illicit love affair with Cleaver based almost exclusively
on sex, Bridget is abandoned for a more slender and sophisticated
colleague.
Though Bridget’s plans don’t always work out, Grant
said that the movie expresses a refreshing outlook on life with the
message that it’s OK to fall short of success.
“I live in that world ““ that was one of the reasons
why I love the book in the first place,” the British actor
said. “Half my friends are like that. We live in a world of
Chardonnay and cigarettes and hopelessness.”
When Bridget Jones is not fussing about her clothes or fretting
about her weight, she finds constant solace in self-help books,
wine and chocolate.
In the end, however, the modern day coquette is finally granted
her happily-ever-after in a suitor who genuinely professes that he
loves her just the way she is.
“If there is a moral to the film ““ that’s
it,” Grant said.
FILM: “Bridget Jones’s Diary”
is now open in theaters nationwide.
