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Renee Zellweger's turn as Bridget Jones marks not only a return to the much-loved character but also to the big screen after a six year break

She’s back! After years of rumours, false starts and script changes, everyone’s favourite singleton is back on our screens, complete with romantic entanglements, knickers-in-a-twist awkward moments and the faithful diary (upgraded to an iPad) in which she records her deepest secrets.

This being 15 years on from the original Bridget Jones’s Diary, there’s a new angle to consider. Bridget is pregnant.

And she’s unsure whether the father of the child is the faithful Mark Darcy, played with as much noble restraint as ever by our own Colin Firth, or the dashing American Jack Qwant, played by Grey’s Anatomy’s devastatingly handsome Doctor McDreamy, Patrick Dempsey.

Not too shabby a dilemma for a romantic heroine, as Renee Zellweger herself is the first to agree. ‘They both came to work every day so I didn’t even have to choose between them — which made every day at work a very nice day!

‘But the funny thing about this film is that by this time Bridget is doing pretty well for herself in terms of listening to her intuition — she’s understanding that she can forge a road to happiness as she defines it, instead of listening to social pressures about what you are supposed to do and supposed to establish in your life.

‘And it’s so ironic that these two gentlemen are both there for her at the same time that she is actually figuring out that she’s OK on her own. But that’s life, I guess.’

For Renee, the return to Bridget Jones is a return to screen acting, from which she had taken a break for six years. She says that during that time, she re-charged her creative batteries by allowing herself to do all the things she hadn’t had time for while establishing her career.

‘I wanted to keep some promises to myself I had made a very long time ago. There’s so much in life to learn that you really don’t have time to when you’re in the cycle of making films because that just keeps you constantly busy. And I did do a lot of things.

‘I spent time with my niece and nephew and took time to get to know them and see them grow up a little bit. I went to Liberia for a women’s charity organisation, which left an impression on me that will last my entire life.’

In the third installment, Bridget is pregnant and she’s unsure whether the father of the child is the faithful Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, or the dashing American Jack Qwant, played by Patrick Dempsey

She confesses that after six years away from the screen, the prospect of slipping back into Bridget’s shoes was one she initially found daunting. ‘It was scary coming back,’ she says.

‘Especially since I love this character and didn’t want to disappoint anybody. I always feel a slight twinge of impostor syndrome when I go to work — it’s an ever-present sentiment for me that I’ll be thinking, “OK, this is the time I’m going to be discovered and fired” — and after being away for so long, it was strong this time.

‘But from the moment I read the script, I was reminded of how much I love Bridget and how much I love her family and her friends, so once I’d gotten past my fear, it was a very happy experience.’

Renee says she even — almost — enjoyed the experience of pretending to be pregnant.

‘The prosthetic baby bump was a substantial number, and it took a long time to put on and — importantly — take off, so I wasn’t drinking a lot of water because if I needed to go to the bathroom, everyone would have to wait a good 20 minutes for me to get back!

‘But it was beautifully built. Kind of like a swimsuit, but with a tank top underneath to keep the weepy rubbery material off my skin, and then a couple of tank tops on top to smooth it out, and then whatever the wardrobe was on top of that.

‘It was heavy, which was essential to look realistic. I had advice from friends who had been pregnant and one said to me, “You shouldn’t put your hands on your back like that, pregnant women don’t really walk around with their hands on their backs.”

Two years ago, she raised eyebrows after turning up with an apparently thinner face and wider, open eyes, but she has vehemently denied it was the result of plastic surgery

‘But it’s my back that really hurt while I was wearing the prosthetic, and I say kudos to the ladies who have been through it in real life!’

Two years ago, she raised eyebrows on the red carpet of Elle magazine’s Women In Hollywood Awards, by turning up with an apparently thinner face and wider, open eyes.

She has adamantly denied she had plastic surgery for the event, and today — looking more or less as she ever did — says her altered appearance was down, not to any artificial procedure, but to simple preoccupation.

‘I’d been staying with a friend in Los Angeles and the month before she’d been diagnosed with ALS [a neurological disease].

‘The reason I went to that event was that she wanted me to go, so she could be on the red carpet with me and prove to herself she wasn’t being defeated by this terrible disease.

‘And that’s what I was thinking about that day. I wasn’t thinking about what I looked like or what people thought. I was thinking about my friend.’

Besides, she says, the idea of ageing has never held any fears for her. ‘I think a woman only gets more interesting as she gets older. Youth and superficial beauty have their place and that is, understandably, celebrated to a degree. But that’s so fleeting and it’s only for a moment in your life.

‘As you mature, you’re not just getting older, you’re becoming more of who you are supposed to be, and becoming the best version of yourself, better and more interesting. It’s a more powerful beauty and it’s a more valuable beauty. Besides — I don’t want to stay the same! I’m curious about what comes next!’

'I’d been staying with a friend in Los Angeles and the month before she’d been diagnosed with ALS [a neurological disease],' she explained. ‘And that’s what I was thinking about that day. I wasn’t thinking about what I looked like or what people thought.' (pictured this week)

She says that, at 47, she has come to terms with the fact that however mature or sophisticated she grows, there are some elements of Bridget in her she will never be able to shake. ‘If you only knew my inner dialogue when I’m at public events!’ she says.

‘I’m always like Bridget, always. There’s always something strange that happens that nobody knows about. The dress doesn’t fit right. Or the zipper broke and it’s been sewn up at the last moment.

‘Or my shoe falls apart and I have to go on stage to present an Oscar, even though it’s taped together. I feel awkward all the time — I guess I just have to get used to it.’ For Colin Firth, however, Bridget’s haphazardness is part of her attraction.

‘I’ve always found Bridget irresistibly charming! Renee once said about Bridget that she makes it OK for the rest of us to mess up. And I think that gives hope to all of us — not just to women, but to men, too.’

It’s been a while — 12 years — since Bridget and Mark Darcy last struck sparks in Bridget Jones: The Edge Of Reason — Colin once joked of the third film that ‘the way it’s going, you may be seeing Bridget Jones’s granddaughter by the time we get there.’

Today he says one of the issues the cast faced is that, while script after script was being produced, looked at, and discarded, they were all growing older.

‘But in the end it became clear to me that the passage of time for the characters was a positive thing, that it made it more interesting. There’s always an understandable scepticism about sequels — is it another chance to wring something extra from the plot? —– but this film is different because we’re all that much older.

‘These people in the film might be a little different now from the way they were before, might look different and have different issues from those they used to have — but so do the audience.

‘If you were Bridget’s age then, you’ll be Bridget’s age now. I think it creates a resonance to see what Bridget’s been through in the past 15 years because she’s aged, too.’

She says that, at 47, she has come to terms with the fact that however mature or sophisticated she grows, there are some elements of Bridget in her she will never be able to shake

He says the addition of Patrick Dempsey, playing a handsome billionaire who takes Bridget’s fancy, gave the plot a fresh twist from that of the old days of Hugh Grant’s love rat Daniel Cleaver.

‘In the first two films you had the good guy and the bad guy with the devilish charm, and that was the fun of it.

But what if the new plot is about Bridget being torn between two good guys?

‘What if he’s a good guy and he has all the eroticism and the romance that goes with being new and unfamiliar? Mark doesn’t have much mystery for her any more, and the other guy does.’

Speaking of mysteries, he is still trying to work out the attraction of the first Mr Darcy, the one he played on television in the 1995 TV adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride And Prejudice.

He says: ‘Yes, the guy with the poker up his backside! Women being attracted to him took me by surprise.

‘Jane Austen writes very well about women, but she doesn’t really write about men from their perspective, and when I took on the role of Darcy it seemed to me that he was imperious and stiff and forbidding, and I didn’t know what there was to play apart from him scowling all the time.

‘I thought it would be quite fun and liberating to play someone who was completely and utterly dislikeable, unsympathetic, judgmental and snobbish.

‘I didn’t have to think about bringing charm to the role — the way I saw it, I just had to stand there and make everyone hate me . . . then this weird thing happened where people liked him, which wasn’t what I was expecting at all! We’re 20 years on and I still don’t understand it.’

Renee says she even — almost — enjoyed the experience of pretending to be pregnant

He says Bridget’s Mr Darcy is far more likeable — but by no means warm and fuzzy.

‘I know people who are as introverted as he is,’ he says, ‘but there are very, very few people who are quite as emotionally constipated.

‘I’m not, myself. I mean, when I’m on my best behaviour and in public, I do revert to a kind of English politeness. And when I’m in Italy, where my wife is from, I do feel very English. But I’m not as repressed as Mark Darcy.’

When he’s not acting, Colin has taken to producing. Earlier this year, his company, Raindog Films, put out the highly acclaimed Eye In The Sky, the tense military drama featuring Helen Mirren and Alan Rickman in what would be Rickman’s last role.

‘As a producer, I can reach into other stories, genres, a universe I would not necessarily be able to be involved in as an actor.

‘I’m a 55-year-old white English male, and I’m probably going to have a long future of playing ever-ageing white English males.

‘The films I make are, well, they’re not necessarily the kind of films that I would go and see.’

He can’t mean the new Bridget Jones, surely?

• Bridget Jones’s Baby is released on September 16.