Helen Fielding (born 19 February 1958) is an English novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character
Bridget Jones
Bridget Rose Jones is a fictional character created by British writer Helen Fielding. Jones first appeared in Fielding's ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' column in ''The Independent'' in 1995, which did not carry any byline. Thus, it seemed to be an actu ...
, and a sequence of novels and films beginning with the life of a thirty something
singleton
Singleton may refer to:
Sciences, technology Mathematics
* Singleton (mathematics), a set with exactly one element
* Singleton field, used in conformal field theory Computing
* Singleton pattern, a design pattern that allows only one instance o ...
in London trying to make sense of life and love. ''
Bridget Jones's Diary
''Bridget Jones's Diary'' is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Sharon Maguire and written by Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies (writer), Andrew Davies, and Helen Fielding. A co-production of the United Kingdom, United States and France, it is ...
'' (1996) and ''
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason'' (1999) were published in 40 countries and sold more than 15 million copies. The two films of the same name achieved international success. In a survey conducted by ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' newspaper, ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' was named as one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century.
''Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy'' was published in autumn 2013 with record-breaking first-day sales in the UK exceeding 46,000 copies. It occupied the number one spot on ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'' bestseller list for six months. In her review for ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' review,
Sarah Lyall
Sarah Lambert Lyall is an American journalist who has worked for ''The New York Times'', including an 18-year period as the title's London correspondent.
Biography
Raised in New York City, Lyall attended the Chapin School and is a graduate of Ph ...
called the novel "sharp and humorous" and said that Fielding had "allowed her heroine to grow up into someone funnier and more interesting than she was before". Late 2016 saw the release of the third movie: ''Bridget Jones's Baby''. On 11 October 2016, and the publication of Fielding's sixth novel, ''Bridget Jones' Baby: the Diaries'' based on Fielding's original columns in ''The Independent'' newspaper on which the movie — which broke UK box office records — was based.
In a 2004 poll for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
, Fielding was named the 29th most influential person in
British culture
British culture is influenced by the combined nations' history; its historically Christian religious life, its interaction with the cultures of Europe, the traditions of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland and the impact of the British Empire. ...
. In December 2016, the BBC's ''
Woman's Hour
''Woman's Hour'' is a radio magazine programme broadcast in the United Kingdom on the BBC Light Programme, BBC Radio 2, and later BBC Radio 4. It has been on the air since 1946.
History
Created by Norman Collins and originally presented by A ...
'' included Bridget Jones as one of the seven women who had most influenced British female culture over the last seven decades.
Biography
Fielding grew up in
Morley, West Yorkshire
Morley is a market town and a civil parish within the City of Leeds metropolitan borough, in West Yorkshire, England. Morley is the largest town in the Borough of Leeds after Leeds itself. Morley forms part of the Heavy Woollen District.
It l ...
, a textile town on the outskirts of
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by populati ...
in the north of England. Her father was
managing director
A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...
of a textile factory, next door to the family home, that produced cloth for miners’
donkey jacket
A donkey jacket is a medium-length workwear jacket, typically made of unlined black or dark blue thick Melton woollen fabric, with the shoulders back and front reinforced and protected from rain with leather or PVC panels.
Originating in the ...
s. He died in 1982 and her mother, Nellie, remained in Yorkshire, passing away in September 2021.
Fielding attended
Wakefield Girls' High School, one of the
Grammar School
A grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching Latin, but more recently an academically oriented secondary school ...
s in the Wakefield Grammar School Foundation. She has three siblings, Jane, David and Richard.
Fielding studied English at
St Anne's College, Oxford
St Anne's College is a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 and gained full college status in 1959. Originally a women's college, it has admitted men since 1979. It has some 450 undergraduate and 200 ...
and was part of the Oxford revue at the 1978
Edinburgh Festival
__NOTOC__
This is a list of arts and cultural festivals regularly taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland.
The city has become known for its festivals since the establishment in 1947 of the Edinburgh International Festival and the Edinburgh Fe ...
, forming a continuing friendship with a group of comic performers and writers including
Richard Curtis and
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson (born 6 January 1955) is an English actor, comedian and writer. He played the title roles on the sitcoms '' Blackadder'' (1983–1989) and ''Mr. Bean'' (1990–1995), and the film series ''Johnny English'' (2003–201 ...
.
Fielding began work at the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...
in 1979 as a regional researcher on the news magazine ''
Nationwide''. She progressed to working as a
production manager
In the cinema of the United States, a unit production manager (UPM) is the Directors Guild of America–approved title for the top below-the-line staff position, responsible for the administration of a feature film or television production. Non- ...
on various children’s and
light entertainment
Light entertainment encompasses a broad range of television and radio programming that includes comedies, variety shows, game shows, quiz shows and the like.
In Great Britain
In the early days of the BBC virtually all broadcast entertainment wou ...
shows. In 1985 Fielding produced a live satellite broadcast from a
refugee camp
A refugee camp is a temporary settlement built to receive refugees and people in refugee-like situations. Refugee camps usually accommodate displaced people who have fled their home country, but camps are also made for internally displaced peo ...
in Eastern
Sudan
Sudan ( or ; ar, السودان, as-Sūdān, officially the Republic of the Sudan ( ar, جمهورية السودان, link=no, Jumhūriyyat as-Sūdān), is a country in Northeast Africa. It shares borders with the Central African Republic t ...
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 for an edition of the
Thames TV ''
This Week'' series "Where Hunger is a Weapon" about the
Southern Sudan rebel war. These experiences formed the basis for her
debut novel, ''
Cause Celeb
''Cause Celeb'' is the debut novel of Helen Fielding, later known for her creation of the character Bridget Jones. her first novel is about a few years in the life of Rosie Richardson, who decides to go to Africa after she breaks up with her boy ...
''.
From 1990 – 1999 she worked as a
journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...
and columnist on several national newspapers, including ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'', ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' and ''
The Telegraph
''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include:
Australia
* ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...
''. Her best-known work, ''
Bridget Jones's Diary
''Bridget Jones's Diary'' is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Sharon Maguire and written by Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies (writer), Andrew Davies, and Helen Fielding. A co-production of the United Kingdom, United States and France, it is ...
'', began its life as an unattributed column in ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'' in 1995. The success of the column led to four novels and three film adaptations. Fielding was part of the scriptwriting team for all three.
Bridget Jones
Fielding's first novel, ''
Cause Celeb
''Cause Celeb'' is the debut novel of Helen Fielding, later known for her creation of the character Bridget Jones. her first novel is about a few years in the life of Rosie Richardson, who decides to go to Africa after she breaks up with her boy ...
'', whose title derives from the expression
cause célèbre
A cause célèbre (,''Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged'', 12th Edition, 2014. S.v. "cause célèbre". Retrieved November 30, 2018 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/cause+c%c3%a9l%c3%a8bre ,''Random House Kernerman Webs ...
, 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
The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
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 able to be honest about the preoccupations of single women in their thirties. The column 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. The paperback, published in 1997, went straight to the top of the best-seller chart, stayed there for over six months and went on to become a worldwide best-seller.
Fielding continued her columns in ''The Independent'', and then ''The Daily Telegraph'' until 1997, publishing a second Bridget novel ''
The Edge of Reason'' in November 1999. The film of ''Bridget Jones's Diary'' was released in 2001 and its sequel in 2004. Fielding contributed the further adventures of Bridget Jones for ''The Independent'' from 2005. Fielding announced in November 2012 that she was now writing a third instalment in the Bridget Jones series.
''Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy'' was published in the UK by
Jonathan Cape
Jonathan Cape is a London publishing firm founded in 1921 by Herbert Jonathan Cape, who was head of the firm until his death in 1960.
Cape and his business partner Wren Howard set up the publishing house in 1921. They established a reputation ...
and in the US by
Alfred A. Knopf
Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...
in October 2013. It debuted at number one on ''
The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'' bestseller list, and number seven on ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' bestseller list. By the time the UK paperback was published on 19 June 2014, sales had reached one million copies. The novel was shortlisted for the 15th
Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, nominated in the Popular Fiction category of the
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
. and has been translated into 32 languages.
A film adaptation of ''Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy'' has not yet been announced, but fans have speculated on who might play Roxster.
Fielding credits Bridget's success to the fact that, at heart, it is about "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.
Personal life and honours
Fielding divides her time between London and Los Angeles. She and
Kevin Curran Kevin Curran may refer to:
* Kevin Curran (cricketer) (1959–2012), Zimbabwean cricketer
* Kevin Curran (cricketer, born 1928) (1928–2017), Zimbabwean cricketer
* Kevin Curran (footballer, born 1919) (1919–1986), Australian rules footballer ...
, a writer/executive producer on ''
The Simpsons
''The Simpsons'' is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical depiction of American life, epitomized by the Simpson family, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, ...
'', began a relationship in 2000 and Fielding had two children with him: Dashiell, born in February 2004, and Romy, born in July 2006.
[ Kevin Curran died from cancer complications on 26 October 2016.][
In 2014, Fielding was one of twenty writers on '']The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...
'' list of Britain's 500 Most Influential and was also featured on the ''London Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after be ...
''s 1,000 Most Influential Londoners list.
Awards and nominations
*1997 British Book of the Year
*2002 Writers Guild of America nomination, Best Screenplay
*2002 BAFTA nomination, Best Screenplay
*2002 Evening Standard
The ''Evening Standard'', formerly ''The Standard'' (1827–1904), also known as the ''London Evening Standard'', is a local free daily newspaper in London, England, published Monday to Friday in tabloid format.
In October 2009, after be ...
Award Best Screenplay
*2013 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize shortlist
*2013 National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors.
The Nat ...
nomination, Best Popular Fiction
*2016 (''Evening Standard'') Peter Sellers Award for Comedy
*2016 Honorary Doctorate of Literature, University of York
*2017 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for ''Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries''
Bibliography
*''Who's Had Who, in Association with Berk’s Rogerage, an Historical Rogister Containing Official Lay Lines of History from the Beginning of Time to the Present Day'' (1987; 1990 in US with first subtitle omitted) (with Simon Bell and Richard Curtis)
*''Cause Celeb
''Cause Celeb'' is the debut novel of Helen Fielding, later known for her creation of the character Bridget Jones. her first novel is about a few years in the life of Rosie Richardson, who decides to go to Africa after she breaks up with her boy ...
'' (1994) is a satire, based on the relationship between celebrities and refugees set in a camp in a fictional country in East Africa.
*''Bridget Jones's Diary
''Bridget Jones's Diary'' is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Sharon Maguire and written by Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies (writer), Andrew Davies, and Helen Fielding. A co-production of the United Kingdom, United States and France, it is ...
'' (1996)
*'' Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason'' (1999)
*'' Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination'' (2003), a comic spy novel set in Miami, Los Angeles, England and the Sudan.
*''Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy'' (2013)
*''Bridget Jones's Baby: The Diaries'' (2016)
;Short stories
* ''Ox-tales'' (2009) a collection of short stories in aid of OxfamOx-tales
on the Oxfam
Oxfam is a British-founded confederation of 21 independent charitable organizations focusing on the alleviation of global poverty, founded in 1942 and led by Oxfam International.
History
Founded at 17 Broad Street, Oxford, as the Oxford Co ...
website, retrieved December 2009
Film adaptations
* ''Bridget Jones's Diary
''Bridget Jones's Diary'' is a 2001 romantic comedy film directed by Sharon Maguire and written by Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies (writer), Andrew Davies, and Helen Fielding. A co-production of the United Kingdom, United States and France, it is ...
'' (2001). Starring Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth
Colin Andrew Firth (born 10 September 1960) is an English actor and producer. He was identified in the mid-1980s with the " Brit Pack" of rising young British actors, undertaking a challenging series of roles, including leading roles in '' A M ...
. Written by Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies, Helen Fielding. Directed by Sharon Maguire. Produced by Working Title Films.
* '' Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason'' (2004). Starring Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth. Written by Adam Brooks, Richard Curtis, Andrew Davies, Helen Fielding. Directed by Beeban Kidron. Produced by Working Title Films.
* ''Bridget Jones's Baby
''Bridget Jones's Baby'' is a 2016 romantic comedy film directed by Sharon Maguire and written by Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer and Emma Thompson, based on the fictional columns by Fielding. It is the third film in the franchise and a sequel to the ...
'' (2016) Starring Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey
Patrick Galen Dempsey (born January 13, 1966) is an American actor and race car driver. He is best known for his role as neurosurgeon Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd in ''Grey's Anatomy''. He had early success as an actor, starring in a number of fil ...
. Written by Helen Fielding, Emma Thompson, Dan Mazer, Directed by Sharon Maguire. Produced by Working Title Films.
References
External links
Helen Fielding profile and articles at ''The Guardian''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fielding, Helen
1958 births
Living people
English women novelists
English humorists
British chick lit writers
Alumni of St Anne's College, Oxford
People from Morley, West Yorkshire
Women humorists
Bridget Jones
Writers from Leeds