"This year I will take total control of my life. Will make resolutions and keep them. Resolution Number One - in order to mark triumphant year in which everything stops being sh*t - will keep a diary."  Bridget Jones

Bridget Jones's Diary is based on Helen Fielding's provocative and hysterical international best-seller. Bridget herself immediately became more than just the novel's perpetually in crisis heroine, she became a cultural phenomenon.

The novel began as a column by journalist Helen Fielding in London's Independent newspaper. From the beginning, the calorie-counting, e-mail-happy, self-help-book-addicted, vodka-drinking Bridget seemed destined to take on a life of her own.

"If Bridget is popular it's because she lives in a state of nameless dread, thinking everyone knows how to live their life except her," says Fielding. "What she doesn't seem to realise is that lost of people feel the same way. There's a little Bridget in almost everyone."

Before the book even hit the bestseller list, maverick British production company Working Title had already snapped up the movie rights.

"We did everything to ensure that the integrity of the character, the setting, and the very "Bridget-ness" of the film remained our priority," says producer Eric Fellner.

To get it right, the producers invited one of Britain's sharpest wits, Richard Curtis, who previously wrote about love and London in "Notting Hill" and "Four Weddings and a Funeral", to collaborate with his longtime friend Helen Fielding on the screen adaptation.

"No one is able to visualise a joke better in Britain than Richard Curtis,"says producer Jonathan Cavendish. "He was perfect for taking the spirit of Bridget and translating that into comic situations that are cinematically dynamic."

Curtis and Fielding faced the further challenge of turning Bridget's intimately internal diary into an external world of parties, parental visits, office elevators and sexual encounters. Yet, no matter what happens to Bridget in the visual world, the script always keeps her inner dialogue a constant presence.

"In the end the script had a real comic truth to it," says Cavendish. " Just as in the book, the film presents people you recognise from your everyday life and it hits close to the bone. Especially, the funny bone."

Renee Zellweger stars in the title role as the dynamic, ourageously original Bridget Jones,  a 32-year-old "singleton" who decides to take control of her life. The film also stars Hugh Grant and Colin Firth and was directed by Sharon Maguire.