Renee on Bridget

Bridget Jones is a thirtysomething 'singleton' who would love to find love and love to lose weight.

The weight issue is a constant one, but the love issue suddenly finds her rogueish boss at the publishing house where she works, Daniel Cleaver, played by Hugh Grant, and an old family friend, the very straight Mark Darcy, played by Colin Firth, both trying to get into her giant bloomers.

Her despairing parents are played by Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones.

Bridget's is a character that women everywhere can relate to. Her problem isn't so much that she is fat - OK, she has chubby thighs - as that she has a negative self-image. So my challenge was to bring out her state of mind.

Bridget is obsessed with her weight. She drinks a lot, and she smokes, and she doesn't go to the gym, so I ate loads and drank Guinness for Ireland and packed on 15lb. I wasn't allowed to do any exercise in case I burned off too many calories. I must have been the only Hollywood actress with weight-gain powder in her kitchen.

It didn't matter about the weight but now I can get back to the gym, run with my dog Dylan, eat plenty of chicken soup and be healthy again.

I finally got to use my college degree preparing for Bridget - I started out in journalism before I switched to drama - working under the name of Bridget Cavendish, in a British publishing house called Picador. I spent seven months getting my accent, which is suburban mixed with London - a bit estuary but educated in a sort of self-defeating publishing Sloanette way.

I felt I had arrived when I passed unrecognised as a publishing girl at a media launch party for a collection of short stories by Bosnian author Aleksandar Hemon and another time at a presentation at Waterstone's.