Helen Fielding
Encyclopedia
Helen Fielding is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones
, a sequence of novels and films that chronicle the life of a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life and love.
Her novels Bridget Jones's Diary
and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
have been published in forty countries and sold over 15 million copies. The two movies of the same name have achieved worldwide success. Bridget Jones’s Diary was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century, in a survey conducted by The Guardian
newspaper.
, a textile town on the outskirts of Leeds
in the north of England. She lived next to a factory that made the fabric for miners’ donkey jackets, where her father was managing director. He died in 1982 and her mother, Nellie, still lives in Yorkshire. Fielding attended Wakefield Girls High School
and has three siblings, Jane, David and Richard. She studied English at St. Anne's College, Oxford and was part of the Oxford revue at the 1978 Edinburgh Festival
, forming a continuing friendship with a group of comic performers and writers including Richard Curtis
and Rowan Atkinson
.
Fielding began work at the BBC
in 1979 as a regional researcher on the news magazine Nationwide. She progressed to working as a production manager on various children’s and light entertainment
shows. In 1985 Fielding produced a live satellite broadcast from a refugee camp in Eastern Sudan
for the launch of Comic Relief
. She also wrote and produced documentaries in Africa for the first two Comic Relief fundraising broadcasts. In 1989 she was a researcher on the Thames TV documentary “Where Hunger is a Weapon” about the Southern Sudan rebel war
. These experiences formed the basis for her first novel, Cause Celeb
.
From 1990 - 1999 she worked as a journalist and columnist on several national newspapers, including the Sunday Times, The Independent
and The Telegraph
. Her most well-known work, Bridget Jones's Diary
, began its life as an anonymous column in The Independent in 1995. The success of the column led to two novels and their movie adaptations. Fielding was part of the scriptwriting team for both.
Fielding divides her time between London and Los Angeles. She and The Simpsons
writer/executive producer Kevin Curran
began a relationship around 1999 and Fielding has two children by him: Dash, born in February 2004, and Romy born in July 2006. However, she and Curran broke up in 2009.
was published in 1994 to great reviews but limited sales. She was struggling to make ends meet while working on her second novel, a satire about cultural divides in the Caribbean
when she was approached by London’s The Independent newspaper to write a column as herself about single life in London. Fielding rejected this idea as too embarrassing and exposing and offered instead to create an imaginary, exaggerated, comic character. Writing anonymously, she felt freed up to be honest about the preoccupations of single girls in their thirties. It quickly acquired a following, her identity was revealed and her publishers asked her to replace her novel about the Caribbean by a novel on Bridget Jones’s Diary. The hardback was published in 1996 to good reviews but modest sales. Word of mouth spread, however and the paperback, published in 1997 went straight to the top of the bestseller chart, stayed there for over six months and went on to become a worldwide bestseller. The diary - starting each day with its signature list of calories, alcohol and cigarette intake, is credited with spawning a new confessional literary genre in the form of Chick Lit
.
Fielding continued her columns in The Independent, and then The Daily Telegraph until 1997, publishing a second Bridget novel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
in November 1999. The movie of Bridget Jones’s Diary was released in 2000 and the movie of the sequel in 2004. In 2005 Fielding began the further adventures of Bridget Jones in The Independent. A third Bridget Jones movie is planned and Fielding is currently at work on the book and lyrics of the musical stage version of Bridget Jones’s Diary..
Fielding credits Bridget’s success to the fact that it is about more than just single life, but “the gap between how we feel we are expected to be and how we actually are” which she has described as an alarming symptom of the media age.
Bridget Jones
Bridget Jones is a franchise based on the fictional character with the same name. English writer Helen Fielding started her Bridget Jones's Diary column in The Independent in 1995, chronicling the life of Bridget Jones as a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life...
, a sequence of novels and films that chronicle the life of a thirtysomething single woman in London as she tries to make sense of life and love.
Her novels Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic...
and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is a 1999 novel by Helen Fielding, a sequel to her popular Bridget Jones's Diary. It chronicles Bridget Jones's adventures after she begins to suspect that her boyfriend, Mark Darcy, is falling for a rich young solicitor who works in the same firm as him, a woman...
have been published in forty countries and sold over 15 million copies. The two movies of the same name have achieved worldwide success. Bridget Jones’s Diary was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century, in a survey conducted by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
newspaper.
Biography
Fielding (born 19 February 1958) grew up in Morley, West YorkshireMorley, West Yorkshire
Morley is a market town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds, in West Yorkshire, England. It lies approximately south-west of Leeds city centre. Together with Drighlington, Gildersome, Churwell, Tingley and East/West Ardsley, the town had a population of 47,579 in...
, a textile town on the outskirts of Leeds
Leeds
Leeds is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. In 2001 Leeds' main urban subdivision had a population of 443,247, while the entire city has a population of 798,800 , making it the 30th-most populous city in the European Union.Leeds is the cultural, financial and commercial...
in the north of England. She lived next to a factory that made the fabric for miners’ donkey jackets, where her father was managing director. He died in 1982 and her mother, Nellie, still lives in Yorkshire. Fielding attended Wakefield Girls High School
Wakefield Girls High School
Wakefield Girls' High School is an independent school in Wakefield, England established in 1878 in Wentworth House, its current location. The school has grown from 59 pupils when it first began to nearly 750 in the present day .-Education:...
and has three siblings, Jane, David and Richard. She studied English at St. Anne's College, Oxford and was part of the Oxford revue at the 1978 Edinburgh Festival
Edinburgh Festival
The Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
, forming a continuing friendship with a group of comic performers and writers including Richard Curtis
Richard Curtis
Richard Whalley Anthony Curtis, CBE is a New Zealand-born British screenwriter, music producer, actor and film director, known primarily for romantic comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill, Love Actually and The Girl in the Café, as well as the hit...
and Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson is a British actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his work on the satirical sketch comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Thin Blue Line...
.
Fielding began work at the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
in 1979 as a regional researcher on the news magazine Nationwide. She progressed to working as a production manager on various children’s and light entertainment
Light entertainment
Light entertainment is a term used to describe a broad range of usually televisual performances. These include comedies, variety shows, quiz/game shows, sketch shows and people/surprise shows.-Light entertainment in Britain:...
shows. In 1985 Fielding produced a live satellite broadcast from a refugee camp in Eastern Sudan
Sudan
Sudan , officially the Republic of the Sudan , is a country in North Africa, sometimes considered part of the Middle East politically. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea and Ethiopia to the east, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the...
for the launch of Comic Relief
Comic Relief
Comic Relief is an operating British charity, founded in 1985 by the comedy scriptwriter Richard Curtis and comedian Lenny Henry in response to famine in Ethiopia. The highlight of Comic Relief's appeal is Red Nose Day, a biennial telethon held in March, alternating with sister project Sport Relief...
. She also wrote and produced documentaries in Africa for the first two Comic Relief fundraising broadcasts. In 1989 she was a researcher on the Thames TV documentary “Where Hunger is a Weapon” about the Southern Sudan rebel war
Second Sudanese Civil War
The Second Sudanese Civil War started in 1983, although it was largely a continuation of the First Sudanese Civil War of 1955 to 1972. Although it originated in southern Sudan, the civil war spread to the Nuba mountains and Blue Nile by the end of the 1980s....
. These experiences formed the basis for her first novel, Cause Celeb
Cause Celeb
Cause Celeb is a novel by Helen Fielding. It's about a few years in the life of Rosie Richardson, who decides to go to Africa after she breaks up with her boyfriend, Oliver Marchant, a TV presenter...
.
From 1990 - 1999 she worked as a journalist and columnist on several national newspapers, including the Sunday Times, The Independent
The Independent
The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
and The Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
. Her most well-known work, Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary
Bridget Jones's Diary is a 1996 novel by Helen Fielding. Written in the form of a personal diary, the novel chronicles a year in the life of Bridget Jones, a thirty-something single working woman living in London. She writes about her career, self-image, vices, family, friends, and romantic...
, began its life as an anonymous column in The Independent in 1995. The success of the column led to two novels and their movie adaptations. Fielding was part of the scriptwriting team for both.
Fielding divides her time between London and Los Angeles. She and The Simpsons
The Simpsons
The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...
writer/executive producer Kevin Curran
Kevin Curran (writer)
Kevin Curran is an American television writer. He has written for Late Night with David Letterman, Married...with Children, and The Simpsons. He was also the voice of Buck the Dog on Married...with Children...
began a relationship around 1999 and Fielding has two children by him: Dash, born in February 2004, and Romy born in July 2006. However, she and Curran broke up in 2009.
Bridget Jones
Fielding’s first novel, Cause CelebCause Celeb
Cause Celeb is a novel by Helen Fielding. It's about a few years in the life of Rosie Richardson, who decides to go to Africa after she breaks up with her boyfriend, Oliver Marchant, a TV presenter...
was published in 1994 to great reviews but limited sales. She was struggling to make ends meet while working on her second novel, a satire about cultural divides in the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
when she was approached by London’s The Independent newspaper to write a column as herself about single life in London. Fielding rejected this idea as too embarrassing and exposing and offered instead to create an imaginary, exaggerated, comic character. Writing anonymously, she felt freed up to be honest about the preoccupations of single girls in their thirties. It quickly acquired a following, her identity was revealed and her publishers asked her to replace her novel about the Caribbean by a novel on Bridget Jones’s Diary. The hardback was published in 1996 to good reviews but modest sales. Word of mouth spread, however and the paperback, published in 1997 went straight to the top of the bestseller chart, stayed there for over six months and went on to become a worldwide bestseller. The diary - starting each day with its signature list of calories, alcohol and cigarette intake, is credited with spawning a new confessional literary genre in the form of Chick Lit
Chick lit
Chick lit is genre fiction which addresses issues of modern womanhood, often humorously and lightheartedly. The genre sold well during the 1990s and 2000s, with chick lit titles topping bestseller lists and the creation of imprints devoted entirely to chick lit...
.
Fielding continued her columns in The Independent, and then The Daily Telegraph until 1997, publishing a second Bridget novel Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason is a 1999 novel by Helen Fielding, a sequel to her popular Bridget Jones's Diary. It chronicles Bridget Jones's adventures after she begins to suspect that her boyfriend, Mark Darcy, is falling for a rich young solicitor who works in the same firm as him, a woman...
in November 1999. The movie of Bridget Jones’s Diary was released in 2000 and the movie of the sequel in 2004. In 2005 Fielding began the further adventures of Bridget Jones in The Independent. A third Bridget Jones movie is planned and Fielding is currently at work on the book and lyrics of the musical stage version of Bridget Jones’s Diary..
Fielding credits Bridget’s success to the fact that it is about more than just single life, but “the gap between how we feel we are expected to be and how we actually are” which she has described as an alarming symptom of the media age.
Films
- Bridget Jones's DiaryBridget Jones's Diary (film)Bridget Jones's Diary is a 2001 British romantic comedy film based on Helen Fielding's novel of the same name. The adaptation stars Renée Zellweger as Bridget, Hugh Grant as the caddish Daniel Cleaver, and Colin Firth as Bridget's "true love", Mark Darcy...
(2001), Starring Renee ZellwegerRenée ZellwegerRenée Kathleen Zellweger is an American actress and producer. Zellweger first gained widespread attention for her role in the film Jerry Maguire , and subsequently received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her roles as Bridget Jones in the comedy Bridget Jones's Diary ...
, Hugh GrantHugh GrantHugh John Mungo Grant is an English actor and film producer. He has received a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and an Honorary César. His films have earned more than $2.4 billion from 25 theatrical releases worldwide. Grant achieved international stardom after appearing in Richard Curtis's...
, Colin FirthColin FirthSirColin Andrew Firth, CBE is a British film, television, and theatre actor. Firth gained wide public attention in the 1990s for his portrayal of Mr. Darcy in the 1995 television adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice...
. Written by Richard CurtisRichard CurtisRichard Whalley Anthony Curtis, CBE is a New Zealand-born British screenwriter, music producer, actor and film director, known primarily for romantic comedy films such as Four Weddings and a Funeral, Bridget Jones's Diary, Notting Hill, Love Actually and The Girl in the Café, as well as the hit...
, Andrew DaviesAndrew DaviesAndrew Davies may refer to:*Andrew Davies *Andrew Davies , Welsh Labour politician*Andrew R. T. Davies, Welsh Conservative politician*Andrew Davies , Welsh darts player*Andrew Davies , English defender...
, Helen Fielding. Directed by Sharon McGuire. Produced by Working Title FilmsWorking Title FilmsWorking Title Films is a British film production company, based in London, UK. The company was founded by Tim Bevan and Sarah Radclyffe in 1983. It produces feature films and several television productions, including films starring comic actor Rowan Atkinson...
. - The Edge of ReasonBridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (film)# Will Young - "Your Love Is King"# Jamelia - "Stop"# Kylie Minogue - "Can't Get You Out of My Head"# Joss Stone - "Super Duper Love Pt. 1"# Mary J...
(2004), Starring Renee Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth. Written by Adam BrooksAdam BrooksAdam Richard Brooks is an Australian politician. He has been a Liberal Party of Australia member for Braddon in the Tasmanian House of Assembly since 2010...
, Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies, Helen Fielding. Directed by Beeban KidronBeeban KidronBeeban Kidron is an English Film Director known for her much-lauded adaptation of Jeanette Winterson's autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and for directing Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason...
. Produced by Working Title Films.
Awards and nominations
- 1997 British Book of the Year
- 2002 Writers Guild of AmericaWriters Guild of AmericaThe Writers Guild of America is a generic term referring to the joint efforts of two different US labor unions:* The Writers Guild of America, East , representing TV and film writers East of the Mississippi....
nomination Best Screenplay - 2002 BAFTA nomination Best Screenplay
- 2002 Evening StandardEvening StandardThe Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...
Award Best Screenplay.