How Renee Zellweger became Bridget Jones and the actors who missed out

It now seems absurd to imagine that anybody but Renee Zellweger could play the role of Bridget Jones on the big screen. She is due to portray the relatable diarist once again in this year's Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy — 24 years after the first film had us all belting out All By Myself in our pyjamas — and we wouldn't have anybody else in the role.

But it's easy to forget, in that respect, how divisive Zellweger's casting was back at the turn of the millennium. When the news was first unveiled, the concept of this archetypal Londoner being played by an American — Zellweger was born and raised in Texas — seemed truly bizarre.

As it turns out, there were some very famous names in the frame and on the shortlist for the role of Bridget, with Zellweger far from the only US actor considered. So let's have a little look at how Bridget stumbled from the pages of a British newspaper on to the red carpets of Hollywood.

Helen Fielding created Bridget Jones for a column in The Independent in 1995 and her pieces became so popular that the first Bridget Jones novel arrived in 1996. Working Title Films snapped up the movie rights sharpish, before the book truly became a bestseller.

Read more: Renée Zellweger Makes Very Honest Admission About The Future Of Bridget Jones (HuffPost, 2 min read)

This started the ball rolling on the extensive hunt for who could possibly play the all-important lead role of Bridget. In a 2001 piece over at the LA Times, director Sharon Maguire revealed that she had discussions with several stars before Zellweger's name even entered contention.

Kate Winslet

There were British names including Emily Watson, Kate Winslet — fresh off smashing box office records with Titanic — and Helena Bonham Carter in the frame. Cameron Diaz was one of the few Americans suggested at this time.

Rachel Weisz's name also came up but, according to reports at the time, she was considered "too beautiful" to be Bridget. Winslet, meanwhile, was reportedly thought to be too young. She was just 24 when filming began — six years younger than Zellweger.

Cate Blanchett

Australian star Cate Blanchett was also considered at this time, just a few years after she won a Bafta with another British role as Queen Elizabeth I in the movie Elizabeth. She was right in the thick of work on her role as Galadriel in Lord of the Rings, so it's entirely possible that scheduling may have played a part in the decision to move away from her as an option.

Read more: Hugh Grant Says the New “Bridget Jones ”Sequel 'Made Me Cry': 'It's Got a Huge Amount of Heart' (People, 2 min read)

Toni Colette

Blanchett wasn't even the only Aussie in the frame. Toni Collette said no to the role because she was on Broadway, performing the lead in Michael John LaChiusa's musical The Wild Party. In the end, that sliding doors moment also led to Collette missing out on another part — also to Zellweger — in Rob Marshall's eventual Oscar-winner Chicago.

"While I was doing Wild Party, I turned down Bridget Jones's Diary, because I didn't know when Wild Party was going to close," Collette told the Miami Herald in 2006. "And that movie was a huge success for Renee Zellweger, and Harvey Weinstein was producing Chicago, and he was keen for her to do it. And that's the way it went."

How Renee Zellweger became Bridget Jones

Eventually, all roads led to Zellweger. "Renee was completely charming but miles apart from the specifics of Bridget Jones," Maguire said in that LA Times piece. She explained that they were both acutely aware of how bad the response could be if this went wrong, saying that Zellweger told her: "If we don't get the accent right, the pair of us — you as the first-time director, me as a Texan — we're going to be so busted."

Zellweger threw herself into the accent work, spending time with the dialect coach Gwyneth Paltrow had used for Shakespeare in Love. She spoke in the accent for weeks at a time while living in LA, then moved to London for several months to immerse herself in UK culture while also gaining weight for the role.

Read more: Jim Broadbent knew Renee Zellweger was ‘special’ from first Bridget Jones film (PA Media, 3 min read)

None of that meticulous preparation stopped the British press from hitting out at the decision to choose Zellweger ahead of the British actors who had been involved in the process. Empire Magazine, for example, wrote that "yet another British role falls prey to US star power".

Hugh Grant, Zellweger's co-star, defended her in Entertainment Weekly, saying: "She's very funny, and she's been living in England a long time now, mastering the accent. It'll be a triumph. I know it will."

Thankfully, Zellweger mostly escaped the extent of the backlash. "I thought it was just a tiny little thing. I didn’t realise just how widespread this controversy was,” she told Yahoo. While preparing for the character, she spent time working in the offices of publisher Picador to get a look into Bridget's world, which also put her unfortunately close to the backlash.

Read more: Renée Zellweger thinks she has a lot in common with Bridget Jones (Yahoo Entertainment, 2 min read)

Zellweger said: "There were a couple things that I picked up closer to the time we filmed because part of my job — or ‘work experience’ as they said — at the publishers was to clip any clippings in the media that had to do with the authors that Picador-Macmillan represent.

"And they represent Helen Fielding. So every now and then something would pop up and I would see ‘Crap American Comedian Playing English Icon,’ and I’d have to cut it out and go put it in the file."

Thankfully for all involved, Zellweger more than delivered and became an unforgettable Bridget. She won a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance in that first film and also got nominations at the Golden Globes, Baftas, and Oscars. The franchise has also been an enormous box office success, with the three films to date earning a combined $756m (£608m) worldwide.

That brings us to Mad About the Boy — the fourth and probably final Bridget Jones adventure. Over a quarter of a century, we've come a long way from being sceptical about a Texan star to being completely and utterly in love with one of cinema's most delightfully flawed female protagonists. Even if someone could spot a little bit of a deep-fried twang creeping into that accent now, they wouldn't even care.

Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is in UK cinemas from 13 February.