Renée Zellweger got so into her role of Bridget Jones that she went unrecognised while preparing for the first film.
Bridget Jones’s Diary, which celebrates its 20th anniversary on 13 April, went on to become a blockbuster and spawned two sequels.
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason followed in 2004 with Bridget Jones’s Baby arriving 12 years later in 2016.
Soon after the first film debuted, the character was known the world round – but ahead of filming Bridget Jones’s Diary, Zellweger went undercover working at a British publishing company for a whole month to prepare for the role.
Zellweger, an American, used a posh accent as well as an alias, and was said to be unrecognised by the workers around her.
The one thing that would have clued people up to her identity, though, was a framed picture of Jim Carrey that she kept on her desk. Zellweger was dating the actor at the time.
However, as discovered by The Independent journalist David Lister at the Cannes Film Festival, nobody realised their new colleague was actually Zellweger and found the picture of Carrey to be quite a strange thing to have on a work desk.
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After the penny dropped and they learned her real identity, it made much more sense, considering their relationship had been all over the newspapers the previous year.
In 2020, Carrey described Zellweger as “the last great love of [my] life”.
The pair were only together for two years and met on the set of the 1999 Farrelly brothers comedy Me, Myself & Irene.
To mark the anniversary of Bridget Jones’s Diary, NOW is creating a free Bridget Jones-themed experience for 20 fans. Find more details here.
