Helen Fielding facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Helen Fielding
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| Born | 19 February 1958 Morley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England |
| Occupation | Journalist, novelist, screenwriter |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | St Anne's College, Oxford |
| Partner | Kevin Curran (died 2016) |
| Children | 2 |
Helen Fielding was born on 19 February 1958. She is a British journalist, novelist, and screenwriter. She is most famous for creating the character Bridget Jones.
Fielding's first novel was about a refugee camp in East Africa. She started writing about Bridget Jones in a secret column for London's Independent newspaper. This column became very popular. It led to four Bridget Jones novels and three movies. A fourth movie was announced in April 2024, set for release in 2025.
Helen Fielding believes Bridget Jones became a success because she showed how people really feel. She showed the difference between how we think we should be and how we actually are.
Contents
Bridget Jones: Books and Movies
Helen Fielding's novel, Bridget Jones's Diary (1996), became a huge hit worldwide. It was published in over 40 countries. Fielding continued to write about Bridget's life in other novels. These include Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (1999) and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2013). She also wrote Bridget Jones’s Baby: the Diaries (2017). All of these books became international bestsellers.
Bridget Jones's Diary was named one of the ten novels that best defined the 20th century. This was in a survey by The Guardian. In 2024, The New York Times called Bridget Jones’s Diary one of the funniest novels since Catch 22.
Bridget Jones on the Big Screen
The movies about Bridget Jones's adventures were also very successful. These films are Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, and Bridget Jones’s Baby. They all earned a lot of money at the international box office. Bridget Jones’s Baby even broke UK box office records when it first came out.
Fielding's novel, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2013), showed Bridget as a widowed mother. She had two small children and tried to start dating again. This book was number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list for six months. A reviewer for The New York Times called the novel "sharp and humorous." She said Fielding made her main character funnier and more interesting.
The movie Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is set to be released in 2025. Renee Zellweger will play Bridget Jones for the fourth time. The movie is based on Fielding’s novel and her original screenplay. Other writers also helped develop the script.
Bridget Jones's Cultural Impact
In a 2004 poll by the BBC, Helen Fielding was named the 29th most influential person in British culture. In December 2016, the BBC's Woman's Hour said Bridget Jones was one of seven women who most influenced British female culture in the last 70 years. Bridget was the only character on the list who was not a real person.
Helen Fielding is currently working on a new novel that is not about Bridget Jones.
About Helen Fielding
Early Life and Education
Helen Fielding grew up in Morley, West Yorkshire. This was a textile town near Leeds in northern England. Her father was the manager of a textile factory next to their family home. The factory made cloth for miners' jackets. Her father passed away in 1982. Her mother, Nellie, stayed in Yorkshire and passed away in 2021.
Fielding went to Wakefield Girls' High School. She studied English at St Anne's College, Oxford. She was also part of the Oxford revue at the 1978 Edinburgh Festival.
Career Beginnings
Fielding started working at the BBC in 1979. She was a researcher for the news show Nationwide. She later became a production manager and director for entertainment shows. In 1985, Fielding produced and directed a live broadcast from a refugee camp in Eastern Sudan. This was for the start of Comic Relief. She also wrote and produced documentaries in Africa for the first two Comic Relief fundraising events.
In 1989, she researched a TV show about the war in Southern Sudan. These experiences helped her write her first novel, Cause Celeb.
From 1990 to 1999, she worked as a journalist and columnist. She wrote for national newspapers like The Sunday Times and The Independent. Her most famous work, Bridget Jones's Diary, started as an anonymous column in The Independent in 1995. The column's success led to four novels and three movies. Fielding helped write the screenplays for all three films.
How Bridget Jones Began
Fielding's first novel, Cause Celeb, was published in 1994. It received good reviews but did not sell many copies. She was finding it hard to earn money while working on her second novel. This novel was a funny story about different cultures in the Caribbean.
Then, The Independent newspaper asked her to write a column about being single in London. Fielding thought this idea was too personal. Instead, she offered to create a funny, made-up character. She wanted the character to be a bit over-the-top.
Writing anonymously, she felt she could be honest about what single women in their thirties worried about. The column quickly became popular. Her identity was revealed, and her publishers asked her to write a novel about Bridget Jones's Diary. The hardcover book came out in 1996. It got good reviews but sold slowly. The paperback version, released in 1997, quickly became a bestseller. It stayed at the top for over six months and sold millions worldwide.
Fielding continued her columns in The Independent and The Daily Telegraph until 1997. She published a second Bridget novel, The Edge of Reason, in November 1999. The movie Bridget Jones's Diary was released in 2001, and its sequel in 2004. Fielding continued writing Bridget Jones's adventures for The Independent from 2005. In November 2012, she announced she was writing a third Bridget Jones book.
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy was published in the UK and US in October 2013. It was number one on The Sunday Times bestseller list. It also reached number seven on The New York Times bestseller list. By June 2014, over one million copies of the UK paperback had been sold. The novel was nominated for several awards and has been translated into 32 languages.
The movies Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, and Bridget Jones’s Baby have earned over three quarters of a billion dollars at the box office.
Fielding wrote the first screenplays for Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget Jones’s Baby, and the upcoming Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. Other writers also helped develop these scripts. Bridget Jones Diary was directed by Sharon Maguire. The screenplay was developed by Fielding, Andrew Davies, and Richard Curtis.
Personal Life
Helen Fielding lives in London and also spends time in Los Angeles. She had a relationship with Kevin Curran, a writer and producer for The Simpsons. They had two children together. Kevin Curran passed away from cancer complications on 25 October 2016.
Helping Others
Helen Fielding is an Ambassador for several charities:
- Save the Children: This charity helps children around the world.
- The Yorkshire Children’s Charity: This group works to reduce child poverty in her home county of Yorkshire.
- Ohana One: This organization of plastic surgeons performs remote surgeries. They also provide surgical training in Africa using smart technology and virtual reality.
- Her collection of short stories, OxTales, was published in 2009 to help raise money for Oxfam.
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 Award Best Screenplay
- 2013 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize shortlist, Comic Fiction
- 2013 National Book Award 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, Comic Novel of The Year
Film Adaptations
- Bridget Jones's Diary (2001). Starring Renée Zellweger, Hugh Grant, Colin Firth. 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 (2016) Starring Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth, Patrick Dempsey. Written by Helen Fielding, Emma Thompson, Dan Mazer. Directed by Sharon Maguire. Produced by Working Title Films.
See also
In Spanish: Helen Fielding para niños
