17 Facts About Helen Fielding

Helen Fielding was born on 19 February 1958 and is a British journalist, novelist and screenwriter, best known as the creator of the fictional character Bridget Jones.

Helen Fielding is currently at work on a new non-Bridget novel.

Helen Fielding grew up in Morley, West Yorkshire, a textile town on the outskirts of Leeds in the north of England.

Helen Fielding's father was managing director of a textile factory, next door to the family home, that produced cloth for miners' donkey jackets.

Helen Fielding died in 1982 and her mother, Nellie, remained in Yorkshire, dying in 2021.

Helen Fielding read English at St Anne's College, Oxford and was part of the Oxford revue at the 1978 Edinburgh Festival.

Helen Fielding began work at the BBC in 1979 as a regional researcher on the news magazine Nationwide.

Helen Fielding progressed to working as a production manager and director on various entertainment shows.

In 1985, Helen Fielding produced and directed a live satellite broadcast from a refugee camp in Eastern Sudan for the launch of Comic Relief.

Helen Fielding wrote and produced documentaries in Africa for the first two Comic Relief fundraising broadcasts.

Helen Fielding was part of the screenwriting team for all four.

Helen Fielding 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.

Helen Fielding rejected this idea as too embarrassing and exposing, and offered instead to create an imaginary, exaggerated, ironically comic character.

Helen 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.

Helen Fielding contributed the further adventures of Bridget Jones for The Independent from 2005.

Helen Fielding announced in November 2012 that she was writing a third instalment in the Bridget Jones series.

Helen Fielding wrote the original screenplays for Bridget Jones's Diary, Bridget Jones's Baby and Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, further developed by additional writers.